


Above, Beneath, Betwixt, Between

by thefutureisbright



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Eddie is dead but it's not sad, Fluff, Ghosts, I'll tag what Stan will be l8r bc spoilers, M/M, Mike is a plumber and he's very good at his job, Richie is nearly 40 in this story, Slow Burn, So is Eddie, but he's been 40 since 1945, ghost!eddie, property developer! Richie, so he's more like ... "Dead"
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-03-02 07:39:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18806695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefutureisbright/pseuds/thefutureisbright
Summary: The first time Richie sees him, he falls out of a window.It’s about ten at night, and Richie is painting the grilles on his open bedroom window with the night breeze caressing his face. He’s got the radio on, but every so often the music is suddenly replaced by harsh static that screams into the room for five or six seconds, before the music starts up again like nothing had happened. Richie doesn’t pay attention to it, assuming it’s to do with the terrible reception, until the radio howls like a banshee. When he turns around, he’s met with the sight of a man dressed in an old-fashioned looking khaki uniform who is squatting next to the radio on the floor, and staring at it intently.Richie promptly startles, before stumbling backwards, and falling out of the window.(previously known as 'The Ghost of You')





	1. I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

Richie’s first love is stand-up comedy. He spends most of his adolescent years with his eyes glued to the flickering TV screen, watching late night comedies protected by a blanket of darkness, ready to charge straight up the stairs should he hear the familiar pounding of his father’s footsteps coming down the stairs.

Richie always assumed he’d become a stand-up comedian, or something similar. His mother was forever smiling at him with this dopy, indulgent grin.

‘Y _ou should be on the stage, child’,_ she always told him.

 He believes her.

 Standing on stage, in front of a sea of squawking, laughing faces. The _I did that_ in your stomach, the _I made these people happy._

It doesn’t work out, though. Richie gets horrendous stage-fright, and runs straight off the stage clutching his stomach the first time he attends an open-mic at his local late night coffee shop. It doesn’t make sense. His mom says he’s funny, Bev says he’s funny, the waitress at the diner that does those paprika fries he loves says he's funny ( _but maybe she’s just being kind and trying to get him to leave a decent tip. He always does.)_

 He isn’t too cut up about it though. Shit happens. So he leaves stand-up comedy to the professionals, and proceeds to have a minor existential crisis about the direction his life is going in.

His father starts getting a bit impatient, not because he’s frustrated that Richie didn’t go to college, or because Richie is leeching off them or anything remotely similar, but because it cuts him up inside to see his nearly-20-year old son so morose and directionless. So he takes him to work with him.

Wentworth Tozier works as an architect in a small firm in Maine. It’s mainly small domestic projects, the occasional corporate one. Nothing too major. Small houses, buildings to put a new Subway in. Richie is entranced. He loves going with his dad to the sites, he can practically see the cogs in his father’s brain spin and whir as he envisages how he’ll turn this small patch of wasteland into someone’s private sanctuary. Richie decides immediately that he wants a part of this.

Richie apprentices with his father. His dad agrees easily, ecstatic that his son is so enamoured with the field that claimed his own heart when he was pre-college and panicking about where his own life would lead. Richie doesn’t want to go to college, so he can’t become an accredited architect, but that doesn’t matter. Richie isn’t interested in modelling power sockets and skirting boards on the computer. Richie dreams of moulding timber, brick and concrete with his own bare hands, sculpting and crafting and carving out a small piece of perfection.

Property development, is what his father tells him it’s called. He’d be a renovator, and Richie decides that that word sits very nicely indeed on the end of his tongue.

He starts off small. An tired-looking apartment with creaking bones and a dusty sigh. Richie tears out the connecting wall between the lounge and the kitchen, allowing the small space to inhale a much-needed breath of fresh air. He extends the bathroom into the needlessly large master (and only) bedroom, and removes the garish pink ceramic bath, replacing it with a walk in shower. A lick of paint here, a sprinkling of tile here, a dash of wallpaper and some new faux-marble countertops. His father claps him on the back when he sees the finished product. ‘ _you’ve done good, kid’._ Richie knew this was what he was made for.

He’s 28 when he starts feeling the first pinches of boredom at the soles of his feet, 30 when his stomach aches slightly when he wakes up in the morning before work, and 34 when he decides that it isn’t enough for him anymore.

His father, now retired and living off a very comfortable pension, offers to lend him some money while he figures out what he wants to do next. Richie grumbles for a few weeks, feeling uncomfortable about taking his dads money. He _uhms_ and _ahhs_ about it, waxing poetic to Bev in the bar after work about how property development wasn’t sparking the pilot light in his soul quite like it used to. Bev nodded sympathetically, and made comforting hums at all the right intervals. Richie left the bar five times drunker and fifty times more appreciative for her friendship.

He’s 36 when he decides to move to Scotland.

He’s been considering it for a while. Find a derelict church, or a run-down old manor house, buy it for an eye-wateringly cheap price, live in it, renovate it, and flip it. A two year project, max. Something to get his teeth into and stave off the anxious dreams that have him shooting up in bed at night, face sticky with sweat and heart beating with ‘ _this can’t be it, please say this isn’t it’._

His relationship with Jasmine had broken down. She couldn’t understand why Richie was so restless, why he’d toss and turn at night instead of hunkering down into the cosy nest of _safe, steady, predictable._ He didn’t blame her. He knew it was frustrating. Hell, _he_ was frustrated. They ended it pretty amicably. A few tears on both sides, a half-hearted promise to remain friends. Richie knew they wouldn’t. He didn’t really mind.

He’d been half-cut and half-asleep when he’d stumbled on it. A beautiful 19th century building on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. It had originally been an orphanage, before changing hands and purpose multiple times over the years. School, a brief stint as a police station, before it was abandoned in 1945, just after the end of the war. The building is on the lip of a lake, and sits nestled comfortably into a small hillock. The brickwork is run down, patches of orange lichen growing excitedly across the otherwise grey surface. There are two working chimneys emerging from the slate roof that connected to two working fire-places. There’s a small porch connected to the front door, and a back door in the kitchen that leads out into an unfenced back garden. It’s ugly, and sits tired and unassuming against the harsh bracken moors of Scotland, not a neighbour in sight. Richie is immediately besotted with it.

He phones Bev, not caring that it’s nearly 3am and he’s definitely still drunk and is probably definitely somewhat delusional. She picks up on the fifth ring.

 

“what the fuck, Rich, it’s arse o’clock in the morning. Are you dying? If you’re not dying you’re gonna wish you were”

 

“I found it”

 

“Huh? Found what? If you found your lost sock and decided to ring me to tell me, I swear to god, Trashmouth, I’m gonna gut you, you –“

 

“No, Jesus Red, no. I found it. I found the _one”_

 

“the one? You mean that dude you were grinding on yesterday? I mean, he was kinda weird looking, wasn’t he? Looked a bit like a trout. But if you think he’s the one I guess –“

 

“Can it, Marsh. One, I wasn’t talking about him but oh my god he totally looks like a trout and two, I mean, the house”

 

“Shit. _The_ house?”

 

“Yup”

 

“ _The_ house, the house? You mean – _THE_ house?”

 

“Yes!”

 

“Holy shit. Where is it?”

 

“…”

 

“Rich…”

 

“Scotland”

 

“Holy shit”

 

“I know”

 

* * *

 

Getting a visa is about as much of a nightmare as Richie expects. It takes forever, and every day he checks the real estate website, sweaty palms and palpitating heart, expecting the little house on the moor to have disappeared from the internet. It never does.

After about four months, and tearful goodbyes to Beverly at the airport, Richie’s on a plane to Scotland. His parents were initially hugely sceptical, lecturing him on the dangers of buying a property without viewing it, and lamenting about how much they’ll miss him when he’s thousands of miles away. They don’t try to stop him though.

Richie spends most of plane ride jittering in his seat. He ends up sat next to a Scottish woman, who balances her tiny daughter on her knee. Richie smiles at the tiny redheaded girl and she smiles back at him, all gums and no teeth. He falls asleep half an hour before they land.

He hires a car at Edinburgh airport. The drive takes him around six hours, a combination of busy main roads and winding country tracks that split the Scottish landscape like veins. He sails over the Skye bridge, and he’s only an hour or two away from paradise.

When he’s about twenty minutes away, he starts getting panicky. He’d spoken to the letting agent at length over Skype, and they’d emailed him a list of all the things that would need fixing, or replacing. It was a very long list. When Richie had received the list he’d not been able to see it as anything other than a challenge, something to get his teeth into. Something to occupy his restless brain. Now though, the list sat like lead in his pocket.

The house sits at the end of an unkempt muddy track, standing alone amongst the foliage. Richie pulls himself out of the car, stretching his aching arms behind his head.

He stares at the house.

The house looks back at him.

He rings his dad.

 

“y’ello?”

 

“Hey, Dad”

 

“Rich! Did you make it okay, laddy?”

 

“Och, aye!”

 

“Your Scottish accent is as awful as mine”

 

“I know”

 

“How is she?”

 

“She’s beautiful”

 

“Need a lot of TLC?”

 

“More than I think I’m capable of giving her”

 

“Hey, now. Where’s that trade-mark Richie confidence? Or, should I say, trade-mark Richie arrogance?”

 

“You’re supposed to be giving me a pep-talk, old man”

 

“I know, I know. You’ve got it, kid. You know you do. I’ll come out and visit you in a few months, maybe stay for a few weeks. Scotland is supposed to be real nice in the summer. Save some of the really tricky parts until then, okay? I don’t want you to hurt yourself”

 

“Your concern is touching”

 

“Richie, I’m serious”

 

“I know”

 

“Your mother misses you already”

 

“I bet she does, now she’s only got you for company”

 

“I miss you”

 

“I know”

 

“I’m here for you. Even half way across the world. You’re my boy”

 

“love you, dad”

 

“Knock ‘em dead, son”

 

_Beep beep beep beep_

 

The house stands in front of him, silently waiting. The wild, windy moors stretch far away.

 

* * *

 

Richie doesn’t do anything to the house for a few days. He drives nearly two hours to the nearest town, and stocks up on all the tools and equipment he thinks he’ll need, before quickly realising that he’ll need to take a trip to one of the larger cities to buy the more expensive materials. He imagines the postal services out in the middle of nowhere leave much to be desired.

The house is much louder than he expected it to be. The moors are noisy, rustling leaves and bleating sheep and wind that whips through your skin and freezes your bones. The house is nearly as loud. Everything creaks, and moans and sighs, loud protests against whatever Richie happens to be doing, whether walking up the stairs or throwing logs into the burner.

He starts working on it four days after he moves in.

* * *

 

The first time Richie sees him, he falls out of a window.

It’s about ten at night, and Richie is painting the grilles on his open bedroom window with the night breeze caressing his face. He’s got the radio on, but every so often the music is suddenly replaced by harsh static that screams into the room for five or six seconds, before the music starts up again like nothing had happened. Richie doesn’t pay attention to it, assuming it’s to do with the terrible reception, until the radio howls like a banshee. When he turns around, he’s met with the sight of a man dressed in an old-fashioned looking khaki uniform who is squatting next to the radio on the floor, and staring at it intently.

Richie promptly jumps, before stumbling backwards, and falling out of the window.

* * *

 

When Richie comes to, he’s lying on the ground directly below the window he fell out of. 

There’s a pillow under his head.

* * *

 

The second time Richie sees him, he pours boiling water all over his foot.

It’s been a few weeks since Richie fell out of the window. He’s forgotten about the man in the khaki uniform that he thought he saw looking at his radio, having convinced himself that it must have been a figment of his overtired imagination.

The house is still, for all intents and purposes, unliveable. There is no hot water, there is no gas, and Richie has to go to the toilet in trenches he digs in the middle of the woodland a few minutes’ walk from the back door. He has never been happier.

He’s knocked a few walls through, the downstairs is now an open plan space, and he’s ordered a new bathroom suite that is supposed to arrive today, along with a plumber that he found online. His name is Mike Hanlon, and he’s lived in the Isle of Skye his whole life.

When Mike arrives, he’s joined with a collie who Mike affectionately calls Mr Chips. Richie scratches the dog behind the ears, and receives a few licks to the inside of his wrist for his trouble.

Mike helps Richie haul the constituent parts of the bathroom suite up the rickety stair case, and Richie is overjoyed to discover that Mike doesn’t complain once. Richie leaves Mike in the bathroom, tinkering with the pipes connected to the old, broken ceramic toilet, and begins to make them both cups of tea using a camping stove connected to a gas cannister he’d bought when he’d been in town.

He’s pouring water from the small camping kettle into Mike’s mug ( _breakfast tea, no milk, no sugar, thanks, Rich!)_ when Richie catches sight of the man in the khaki uniform, turning the ring  on the gas cannister with a hesitant finger.

Richie startles, the force of which sends his arm flailing through the air, and sends the contents of the kettle sailing through the air in a graceful arc before landing on his foot.

Richie curses, grabbing the bottle of cold water sat on the worktop, and quickly proceeds to pour the contents over his poor, red raw foot.

When he looks up again, the man has gone.

 One of the other bottles of water has upended itself on a cloth, however. Richie doesn’t think anything of it when he grabs the soaking wet cloth and wraps it around his foot.

 

* * *

 

The third time Richie sees him, he learns his name.

A month later, Mike has finished the bathroom. The plaster on the walls is still white and unpainted, and the floor hasn’t been properly tiled yet, but the bath, sink and toilet has been replaced, and Richie was half way through wiring the extractor fan. Mike had kindly agreed to stay on and help Richie replace the kitchen sink, and install the washing machine and tumble dryer. Richie was elated. He’d grown close with Mike quickly, and he loved listening to Mike’s stories about Scottish folklore. Richie listened to Mike talk for hours about kelpies and the loch ness monster and never found himself drifting off.

Soon enough, they broached the topic of ghosts.

“Do you believe in ghosties then, Mikey?” Richie asks, the man in the khaki uniform a vivid picture in his mind.

“Well, they say that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, right? That’s an important element of the physics of life, so, I can’t accept that when we die we just … disappear, and all that energy just leaks into the air? Where would it go?”

“I dunno, back into the ground?”

“Nah, I don’t reckon so. I reckon it’s gotta go somewhere else. I reckon our consciousness, like, the thing that makes us truly us, escapes our physical bodies when they run out of energy and become something else. Maybe we become light. Maybe we become oxygen, I don’t know.” 

“So you don’t believe in ghosts in the sense that you don’t believe we can walk around as physical manifestations of how our physical bodies looked, then?” 

“I just dunno, Rich. We probably will never know. Here – hand me that spanner, this bolt is being a feckin’ nightmare” 

Richie thought about what Mike had said for a long time. 

 

* * *

The third time Richie sees him, he learns his name. 

When Mike had left for the evening, Richie waded into the shallow lake, water lapping around the tops of his rubber boots. He threw small pebbles into the water. _Plip Plip Plip._ The moor was uncharacteristically silent. He stared down into the water.

The reflection of the man dressed in the khaki uniform stared back at him.

Richie turned around.

The man in the khaki uniform was stood next to him, wringing his hands, his brow furrowed.

Richie swallowed.

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Eddie”

“Why d’ya keep letting yourself into my house, Eddie?”

Richie fought against his quivering voice to keep his tone stern and challenging.

“I – I don’t. It’s hard to explain. What year is it?”

“Uh… what?" 

“What year is it?”

“Are you on drugs or something, dude? Lost on your way back from a costume party?”

“Please, just tell me, what year is it?" 

“2019” 

“Ah”

“What’d’ya mean, ‘ah’?” 

“I mean, I haven’t seen anyone in this house since 1945” 

“… Dude you cannot be over 70 fucking years old. Stop bullshitting me, just tell me the truth and I promise I won’t get Mike to impale you on one of those rubber poles he keeps in his van” 

“I’m not over 70. I'm 36 – I was 36.”

“Well, how do you know no one’s been in this house since 1945? And what do you _mean,_ you ' _were_ ' 36?” 

“Because I’ve been here on my own since 1945” 

“You’re still not making any sense, my man”

Eddie rubbed his hand over his face, and sighed.

“You won’t believe me, so there isn’t much point”

“Try me”

“I worked here. This place was used as an evacuation safe house for children from across Scotland, but mainly Edinburgh and Glasgow. They were moved here to escape the bombing. I worked here as a doctor, I cared for the children. I – I died here.”

“What do you mean, _you died here?_ ”

“I was stabbed”

“hang on – _bombing_? To escape _bombing?”_

Richie could barely breathe.

“Yes, bombing.”

“… And you said you haven’t seen anyone here since 1945”

“That is correct”

“So, what you’re telling me is that –" 

“Yes”

“You’re …”

“I am” 

Richie doesn’t reply. He turns around, and walks back into the house.

* * *

 

When he shuts the door, the lake glitters like a pool of liquid mercury. Eddie has gone. 

 


	2. King, honour, human dignity, etcetera

Edward James Kaspbrak was born in 1909, to Frank James Kaspbrak and Sonia Jennifer Kaspbrak (neé Stewart) in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was 9 lbs 6. His father worked as an alienist at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum before he’d left to serve on the Western Front, and his mother was a homemaker. His childhood was about as conventional as possible, given the circumstances. He barely saw his father, who worked eye-wateringly long hours at the psychiatric hospital before leaving for France in 1916. He’d spent most of his childhood attached to his mother’s side, fingers sticky with homemade jam, leaving strawberry smudges on the stiff cotton of her skirt. 

Edward James Kaspbrak lost his father when he was twelve. He’d served on the front lines at the Western Front, dodged artillery shells and nursed sick men back to life with nothing but dirty gauze and sheer willpower. He’d survived that, but he couldn’t survive the tumour that grew malignant and engorged in his liver. He’d died from cancer, the treatable kind. The chorus of ‘ _I’m fine, I’m fine’s’_ his father sang out every time he winced in pain when he’d returned home at the beginning of 1918 had been lies. He’d died, emaciated and pallid, in a hospital bed with Eddie at his side.

“Look after your mother, Eddie”

“I will, daddy”

His mother changed soon after his father died. She had always been protective, had winced and jittered every time Eddie did something she did something she thought was dangerous. These ostensibly dangerous things ranged from riding his bike too fast down the hill to drinking his water too fast when he’d come in from playing outside, skin still sizzling with warmth.

“ _Careful,_ Eddie-bear! You’ll choke!”

“It’s only water, Ma”

Eddie watched passively, helplessly, as his mother descended into health anxiety so extreme she’d feed him medication from his father’s left over, and swiftly depleting, supply. She’d fed him anti-psychotics, extract of the calabar bean to stave of general paralysis, a psychiatric condition that Eddie was sure he didn’t have. His limbs moved just fine. He still took the pills.

When he’d coughed up blood aged eighteen, bleary eyed and thick tongued, she’d taken him to the hospital. She’d paid for Eddie to be poked and prodded by physicians, who concluded that he’d been poisoned. His mother was arrested the same day, and committed to the same institution her husband worked at. Her diagnosis was generalised hysteria. She was unhinged, hyper emotional, and something about her womb shifting in her torso, an evil animalistic organ that polluted her mind. Eddie wasn’t listening to the alienist who explained it all to him. 

Eddie visited her twice. Once when he’d graduated from medical school, and once when he’d finally plucked up the courage to tell her that he’d been in a committed, but secret, relationship with a school teacher for three years.

She’d screamed like a wounded dog, and Eddie swore he’d never return.

Eddie Kaspbrak became Dr Edward Kaspbrak in 1934. He’d scraped through medical school by the skin of his teeth, but he’d done it. Becoming a doctor seemed like the most natural decision in the world, like Eddie had sleepwalked through the application process. His education flashed before his eyes like lightning, and it felt like he’d taken a single breath between arriving at the University of Edinburgh Medical School and starting his residency at Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow. Eddie had initially considered becoming an psychiatrist, an aborted attempt at walking in his father’s footsteps whilst also learning to cure his mother’s delusions. He’d quickly abandoned that idea.

 

* * *

 

3rd September 1939. Eddie was 30 years old. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that ‘ _this morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us._ ’ Britain stood still, rocked by the prospect of plunging themselves into yet another half-decade of unbridled fear, poverty and uncertainty. Dr Kaspbrak spilt his coffee all over his legs. 

When he got home, his partner Rupert was weeping quietly in front of a fire that flickered pathetically, before disappearing in a puff of smoke that curls gently towards the ceiling.

 

* * *

 

Rupert left Scotland for France in 1941. Eddie doesn’t wave him off from the station. They can’t risk it. When Rupert walked out of Eddie’s small cottage for the last time, Eddie slammed the door shut and howled until his lungs burn. Bitter thoughts of tearful women waving to their husbands with hankerchiefs in their hands, children crying as the train pulls out of the station, their mothers hands gripping their soldiers in an iron-vice. Eddie couldn’t have that, despite how desperately he craved it.

He wished Rupert was going somewhere – anywhere – but France. Not France. Not again.

 

* * *

 

After a serious bombing raid on the Scottish capital city in late 1940, swift plans were made for the evacuation of children from Edinburgh to the Highlands and Islands, and the Isle of Skye. Eddie applied for the role of resident physician for a small group of children travelling to a disused school building.

When he’d heard that he’d been successful, and he’d gotten the job, he’d driven to the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, and stood outside the gates for three hours. Breathing. Staring.

He didn’t walk into the building.

 

* * *

 

He’d left Edinburgh in February 1941 with a small suitcase and a hole in his heart.

 

* * *

 

Rupert Brodie dies Brigadier R. Brodie in 1943. The last letter that Eddie receives from Rupert arrives in Skye three weeks after Rupert’s death. It’s mottled with blood and dirt. Eddie can barely read the scrawled handwriting, but he spends hours staring at it once the children have gone to bed.

 

* * *

 

Eddie enjoyed his job. He spent his days cleaning scraped knees, setting one or two broken wrists or toes, giving the children their booster vaccinations, that sort of thing. Mindless busy work, he supposed. Nothing too taxing. He was one of two adult staff, the other an older woman with a kind face and gentle eyes. The children were pleasant, for the most part. Eddie, who had never spent much time around children even when he himself was one, adored children. The innocence, the playfulness, the eagerness to learn, to experience, to grow. He’d grown particularly fond of one child in particular, a small boy with timid eyes that reminded Eddie so much of himself that he’d had to sit down the first time he’d seen Henry Bowers throwing sticks in the direction of the small boy. The small boy had done nothing, just wrapped his arms around his skinny torso and trembled, hands in front of his face. Eddie had sent the loutish Bowers boy to bed without any supper.

 

* * *

 

The days became weeks, weeks became months and months became years. The end of 1944 sees the British government announce that the end was in sight, that it was safe for arrangements for the return of evacuated children to be set in motion. The children screamed and cheered with joy, and they had celebrated that evening with copious amounts of strawberry jelly and half melted ice-cream.

 

* * *

 

 Dr Edward Kaspbrak got stabbed as he slept four days before he was due to return to Edinburgh. The letters and pictures he had recieved from Rupert over the years 1941-1943 were strewn across the room, crumpled and torn. 

The police give up trying to find the culprit almost immediately, refusing to accept that a child or an older woman with such a kind face could commit such a heinous crime. Eddie’s body isn’t transported back to Edinburgh, and is instead buried in the grounds of the house. A grave marked only by an anonymous cross, small and unassuming.

The cross is soon buried under a dense thicket of thistles.

The children and Mrs McGethen leave the house in the spring of 1945.

Eddie’s body is left alone in the windy wilds of the Scottish moors. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter was so short, it's just a lil exposition-y thing providing some background about our friendly neighbourhood ghost.
> 
> Catch me on tumblr; queen-sock.tumblr.com
> 
> [chapter title is taken from the poem Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes]


	3. In His Tomb by the Sounding Sea

When Richie wakes up the next morning, he all but launches himself out of bed. He runs to the window, hauling it open, not bothering to open the curtains.

The lake twinkles in the sunlight. Eddie is not stood by the shore.

The room is silent, save for the short, heavy puffs of Richie’s anxious breaths. Eddie is not in his bedroom, he’s not in any of the spare bedrooms, and he’s also not in the bathroom. Richie walks downstairs,  and does not find Eddie in the kitchen, dining room or lounge. The house is empty.

The door wrenches open and Richie screams.

“Fuckin’ hell!” 

“Jesus Christ on a fucking crackerbread, Hanlon, don’t you knock?!”

Mr Chips bounds through the open door, tongue lolling lazily out of the left side of his mouth. Richie crouches down, partly to keep himself from fainting from shock, but mostly to give Mr Chips a scritch behind the ear.

“Why’dya scream like that, lad?” 

Richie’s hamstrings start screaming at him, and after debating standing up and doing something productive, Richie flops down onto his arse, legs splayed. Mr Chips, delighted, lies on his back in between Richie’s legs. Richie rubs his fluffy tummy. Mike laughs at them, and begins filling up the camping kettle. 

“Och aye, just regular wee things, laddy”

“Git tae fuck” Mike scolds, but he shoots a smile at Richie, who has progressed to lying on his back, with Mr Chips front paws on his stomach.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m just trying to practice, I’m determined that eventually I’ll be able to go shopping in Portree and convince everyone I’m actually Scottish”

“You do realise that everyone on the whole Isle knows you’re American, right? I don’t think anyone who isn’t Scottish has lived here for decades. You’re the most exciting thing to happen to this little isle for years” Mike says, passing Richie a mug of steaming coffee. Richie stands up, accepting the mug graciously.

“Yeah, about that…”

 

* * *

 

 “So let me git this straight. Ye’v bin seeing a guy in this house dressed as an army officer?”

Richie rubs his hands over his eyes, scrubbing hard enough that stars bloom in the darkness behind his eyelids.

“Sort of”

“Is it some guy playing a joke on ye or something? One of the wee bairns from the town?” 

“Naw, it’s definitely not a kid. He’s a fully-grown man, like, my age or sumthin’”

 Mike hums thoughtfully, his face screwed in concentration as he wrestles with the pipe he’s trying to bend into place. Richie stands behind him, half-heartedly screwing a mirror into the wall. The drill spends more time on the floor than in Richie’s hand, though.

“and ye said he told ye he was dead? That he’d died in ’45?” 

“Yup, s’what he said”

“and yer _sure_ he’s not a ghost?”

Richie scoffed incredulously. 

“Michael, ghosts aren’t real”

“What makes ye so sure?”

“Common sense”

Mike shoots Richie a raised eyebrow. 

“… Do you not have common sense?” Richie mumbled.

“I guess not” is all Mike says, shuffling closer towards the pipe-bend.

“Mike, look. You’ve either left a gas tap loose and I’m going mad, or I’m genuinely being haunted so I’d appreciate it if we could approach this little bit more seriously” 

Mike finally bends the pipe into place, and sits back on his heels with a triumphant grin. He stands up, and turns to face Richie.

“I saw my maw three days ago”

“… Ah yes, an entirely relevant digression” 

“She died six years ago” 

“… Shit”

 

* * *

 

After a large amount of begging on Richie’s part, and a desire to get the washing machine plumbed in early on Mike’s part, they came to an arrangement. Mike would stay in the cottage on the moor overnight, sleeping in the guest room right next to Richie’s bedroom. They’d stay up as late as possible, and try and lure the man in the khaki uniform out of hiding. 

“He said his name was Eddie, so maybe I can just stand in the gardens and … yell for him?”

Mike shot another incredulous look Richie’s way. 

“Are ye sure that’s tha best way to beckon a maybe-not-real ghost out of hiding?” 

“I have no idea, Michael, I’m not the one who seems to commune with the dead on a regular fucking basis now, am I”

They’d finished working for the day a few hours ago, and were now sat out on the grass near the lake. The lake was a lake of fire, reflecting the golden rays of the sun. Mr Chips was sniffing in the undergrowth lazily, occasionally coming back over to Mike for an ear scratch. Richie had cooked them pasta – about all he could manage on the small camping stove. The moor was bristling with noise, but the two men were silent. Mike’s eyes were closed as he lay on his back, head resting on his arms that were folded behind his head. Richie was throwing small stones into the lake. _plip plip plip._

When it was dark, they moved inside and sat around the small burner. 

“So what normally happens, then? When does yer army fella normally come out?” 

“He’s not a train, Mike, he doesn’t have a schedule” 

“Y’know what I meant”

“He just sort of … appears. I’ve never had to actually do anything before apart from –“ 

“Apart from what?”

“Well, every time he’s come out, I’ve hurt myself” 

Mike’s face lights up, and Richie’s clouds with horror.

“No, Mike! No” 

“Just a wee cut, ye’ll barely feel it”

“NO, MIKE!”

With this, Mike began to chase Richie around the house, brandishing his pen-knife like a sabre. Richie was hollering with half-delight half-genuine panic that Mike would carve him up with the small, probably incredibly blunt, blade.

“MIIIIIIKE! I changed my mind, it’s not that I hurt myself _then_ see him, I see him _then_ hurt myself! Put that fucking knife away” Richie screamed, very aware that Mike was a hairs distance away from him now.

“Fine, I’ll stab ye when I see him!”

“You do that!”

They both slowed to a walk, Richie’s chest heaving markedly more than Mike’s. They’d ended up in the kitchen, and Richie watched as Mike put the pen knife on the kitchen table.

“Tea?” Richie asks, picking up the kettle and filling it from the newly functioning tap.

“M’gasping, thanks, lad”

They sat huddled close together for the rest of the night, neither bothering to take to their beds upstairs.

 

* * *

 

 Eddie didn’t appear. 

Richie awoke the next morning with a crick in his neck and a tongue in his eye. He gently shoved Mr Chips off his chest, where the collie had slept for most of the night, before rolling onto his knees and hauling himself up. Mike was already in the kitchen, fiddling with the back of the new washing machine.

“G’mornin’, Guvna!”

“M’not from London, Rich”

“Eh, same difference. Howzit?”

“Yeah, she’s bein’ a brat right now but I’ll soon ‘av ‘er singing” Mike grunted, still fiddling with some bendy tubing he was fixing to the back of the washing machine.

“He didn’t show up” Richie said, filling up the kettle. 

“I know”

“I think I’m losing my fucking mind”

“I know”

Richie placed the kettle on the gas burner, twiddling the knob to allow the gas to flow from the gas canister into the burner. He jumped backwards when the flame bloomed suddenly, glowing orange then red then blue.

He hadn’t showed up. Richie had sort of expected it. It was sort of like when you did something really impressive, and then ask someone to watch you do it, and then you can’t do the impressive thing again, no matter how hard you try. Not that seeing (hallucinating?) 1940s army doctors was impressive or anything. It was probably quite the opposite. 

“I need a break” Richie mumbled, mostly to himself.

Mike stops what he’s doing, and stands up, wiping his greasy hands on a cloth.

“How long have ye been out here on yer own?” 

“To be honest I can’t remember”

“Yer obviously in need of a break, Rich. You’ve been out here on yer own for too long, s’bound to make ye feel a bit squiffy. Come back to mine for the weekend, we can take it easy and ye can come back here and if ye do see the ghostie again, we’ll know its something we need to sort oot” 

Richie decides on the spot that Mike is one of the best friends he’s ever had.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Mike lives in a modern house that sits almost jarringly in the mouth of a hill. It’s all clean, white lines and sloping ceilings and Richie both hates and loves it. The first thing Richie does when he gets there is collapse on Mike’s squishy black sofa, arm flung dramatically over his face. He intends on only resting his eyes for a few seconds, but before he knows it he’s out for the count. Several hours lost to a dreamless sleep later, and Richie wakes up. He feels alert, and more rested than he ever has since he moved to Scotland all those months ago.

When he looks around, he spots Mike sat in an armchair next to a fire. He’s got one hand on Mr Chips’ head, and one hand flicking through an old looking photo album. There’s a glass of honey-coloured liquid on the table next to him, two orbs of ice floating in it.

“Oops. Sorry, dude, I think I’ve been sleeping a bit worse than I thought”

Mike laughs indulgently, and Mr Chips’ head perks up at the sound of Richie’s scratchy voice. 

“S’okay, lad”

Richie swings his legs off the sofa, and leans forward, eyes scanning the photos glued on the open page of the album Mike is looking at.

“Is that you?”

“Aye” 

“Aw, you were so cute. What happened?”

“get tae fuck, cheeky bastard” Mike scolds, swatting half-heartedly at Richie’s head, before he points at another glass of honeyed liquid on the floor by Richie’s feet.

“It’s scotch, if ye want it.”

Richie nods gratefully, leaning down to pick up the glass. It’s a welcome cold against his slightly clammy skin. 

“Is that your mom?” Richie asks, breaking the silence. He points at the photo with the young Mike whose sat on the shoulders of a young woman with sparkling eyes and a kind smile.

“Aye” is all Mike says, eyes glazing over for a second.

Richie doesn’t know what to say, and so he says nothing.

They sit in silence for a very long time, the only sounds the crackle of the fire, Mr Chips’ snuffly breaths and the crackling of the photo album paper. 

“They died in a house fire” 

Richie doesn’t say anything.

“Arson, it was. Some wee drunk bastard from the city. Threw a lit cigarette in through their window and it caught the curtains.”

Richie doesn’t say anything, just closes his eyes. 

“The first time I saw her was a year after she died. She was in my garden, watching the birds. I damn near had a stroke. I yelled out to her, anything to get her to talk to me. But she didn’t. I’d see her, occasionally, always sat on the same bench in my garden, but she never spoke to me. She still doesn’t.” 

“Do you ever see your dad?”

“Naw, never have”

“So that’s why you don’t think I’m insane”

 “Aye”

“Will you think I’m horrible if you say I don’t believe you?” Richie asks, hesitantly.

“No” Mike replies honestly. “Do you believe me?”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore”

 

* * *

 

The weekend is over before Richie even blinks. He spends most of it asleep, or mooching around Portree with Mike. They drink a lot of scotch, play a lot of card games and eat a lot of food. Richie eats a _lot_ of food. After eating only camping-stove-pasta for months on end, oven pizza tastes like the nectar of the gods. 

Before he knows it, and before he’s really ready, he’s clambering out of Mike’s van back at his little cottage on the moor.

“I’ll be back tomorrow, lad”

And then Mike’s gone. 

Richie stands on the porch of his little cottage, and takes a deep breath. He opens the door.

Eddie’s sat at the kitchen table.

 

* * *

 

“I am fucking insane”

“Hello” 

“You’re not real”

“I mean, I’m a ghost, so I’m about as real as a ghost can be”

“You are a figment of my imagination. I am not standing in my kitchen talking to a dead person”

“… You are” 

“Why didn’t you come out when Mike was here? When I was yelling for you in the back garden? Did you even hear me? Can ghosts hear? You must be able to hear, I mean, I’m talking to you right now and you’re responding so you must have _some_ capacity for hearing which means you were just ignoring –”

 “I’m shy” Eddie interrupts, face turned towards the floor.

“Huh?” Richie grunts, pacing back and forth.

“I didn’t want to come out when the other man was here, I didn’t know who he was and I got … scared …” Eddie trails off. His face was still turned towards the floor, and Richie was sure that if it were possible for a ghost without blood to flush, Eddie would be scarlet red by this point.

“In my defence, you barely know who I am either and you don’t seem to mind popping out of the woodwork every so often to scare _me_ shitless, do you!” Richie responds, accusingly. 

Eddie tilts his face, and meets Richie’s gaze.

“I sort of do know you, I’ve been watching you for the past few months, after all"

“That’s fucking creepy, Eds”

As soon as he says it, Richie knows he’s fucked up. Eddie’s face twists in pain, and he stands up and leaves the room. Only, he doesn’t leave through the door, he walks straight through the wall. Richie stares at the spot in the wall that Eddie had disappeared through, slack jawed. 

“Wait! Eddie!”

Richie scrambles around the kitchen table, and follows Eddie ( _through the door)_ into the living room. Eddie is crouched in the corner of the room, head in his hands.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you or anything. I’ve just been on my own for over 74 years and I – I am so desperately lonely, Richie”

Richie’s heart thumps painfully in his chest. He squats down, but leaves several feet between him and the ghost.

“Aw, shucks, Eddie. If I could touch you I’d give you a hug right now”

Eddie snorts, and looks up at Richie. His eyes aren’t wet, which Richie assumes is because there is no water flowing through his spectral form. His eyes are slightly shinier, though, and they’re more insistent, more earnest.

“I don’t think you can touch me”

“Maybe we could try?” Richie asks, before he can stop himself. He doesn’t have long to panic about being forward, though, because Eddie agrees almost immediately.

Richie debates just trying to touch Eddie’s hand, or his shoulder, but decides to just go all out and leans forward, arms open, expecting to enclose a solid form in his arms. That doesn’t happen. What does happen is Richie falls forward, straight through Eddie’s ghostly form, and almost headbutts the wall. The air that Eddie’s form occupies is scalding hot. Eddie leaps forward, shaking his limbs violently.

“Bloody hell!” Eddie exclaims, face contorted in pain.

“Huh” is all Richie says. He shifts so he’s sat on his arse, knees folded up against his chest. Eddie stands before him, looking mildly scandalized.

“Why aren’t you freezing?”

“Pardon?”

“Ghosts are always freezing in movies. You’re not. You’re like I just fell head first into fuckin’ Mount Vesuvius. Why aren’t you freezing?” 

Eddie doesn’t say anything, just continues to look upset.

“Wait – when I fell out of the window you managed to put a pillow behind my head. How’dya do that if you can’t touch anything?”

“Well, I’ve done some experimenting over the past seven decades, and I’ve worked out that I can touch things that aren’t alive – so things that aren’t made of flesh. Or things that are also dead, I can touch those, too. I just can’t touch living matter”

“I see, very scientific” Richie replies, but he’s mostly lost in thought. Without warning, he scrambles to his feet, and disappears into the kitchen. A confused and still scandalized Eddie follows, floating through the wall, where he finds Richie triumphantly holding out a pair of still-in-the-packet oven mitts. 

“Put these on”

Eddie does as he’s told.

“Why am I wearing these? What are they?”

“Oven mitts. I bought them to help me carry pots of boiling water up the stairs but I haven’t needed them so far – I thought we could -“ 

Richie trails off, and reaches out to touch Eddie’s oven-mitt covered hand. Eddie flinches away a bit, but doesn’t move his hand. 

Richie makes contact with the oven mitt, and squeezes.

Eddie squeezes back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> catch me on tumblr and lemme know what you lived and what you hated @ queen-sock.tumblr.com
> 
> chapter title is from Annabelle Lee by Edgar Allen Poe.
> 
> Also, Mike is speaking 'weirdly' in this bc he's Scottish. My Scottish dialect isn't as good as Irvine Welsh's in Trainspotting, probably because I'm not Scottish. I've had a good go, though, so hopefully it's not too jarring.


	4. Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced

A stream of lava-hot water hit Richie’s back, waging a brutal war against the knotted muscles of his back.

 

“SHE’S ALL I NEED ALL OF MY LIFE!”

 

He rubbed the bar of ivory coloured soap between his hands, before rubbing the soapy lather over his chest.

 

“I FEEL SO GOOOOD IF I JUST SAY THE WOOOOOORD”

 

Turning around, Richie closed his eyes against the torrent of water, letting it rush over his face and chest, the soapy suds disappearing down the drain.

 

“ SUH-SUH-SUSSUDIO”

 

Richie opened his eyes, mouth still half open from where he’d been singing, and, as if he had always been there, Eddie’s disembodied head looked back at him from where it was sticking directly through the shower curtain.

 

“Richie! The lambs have come back down off the hills and – oh good lord, you’re naked!”

 

“JESUS FUCK!”

 

A primal scream tore its way out of Richie’s throat as he unceremoniously tumbled to the floor of the shower, clasping helplessly at the shower curtain as he fell. The curtain ripped from its fastenings, and floated to the ground gently. Richie grabbed at it, yanking it towards him to cover what was left of his modesty.

 

“What the fuck, Eddie!”

 

Eddie was standing in the bathroom, looking scandalized but also very mildly amused.

 

“I’m ever so sorry, Richie!”

 

“The door was locked, how the hell did you even get in here?!” Richie demanded, feeling his face bloom with blush, caused not only by the scalding temperature of the water.

 

“I – I didn’t use the door”

 

Richie blinked, incredulous.

 

“You didn’t use the door” he deadpanned, raising his eyebrows, an invitation. ‘ _Explain yourself’._

 

“I haven’t used a door in seventy years, and I don’t intend on starting now!”

 

For a moment, neither of them speak. Eddie has his arms crossed in what Richie imagines is supposed to be indignation, a silent ‘ _I’ve been here longer than you, this is more my house than it ever will be yours.”_ Richie can’t help but feel a pang in his chest, something so close to affection it’s uncanny, a cloying kind of feeling that envelops his heart and holds it hostage.

 

Eddie breaks first.

 

“It really was an accident, Richie, I sort of forgot – I forgot about …” he trails off before he can say it, but Richie knows.

 

_I forgot what it’s like to be alive. What it’s like to spend time with another person._

 

Richie’s annoyance melts like snow. 

* * *

The house is almost finished. Nearly all of the major appliances have been installed, the water runs perfectly, and the electrics have been wired and approved. The only major task facing Richie now was decorating, which was unfortunate because Richie had been cursed with perpetually shaky hands meaning that his lines were never straight or clean enough. He’d been complaining about it to Eddie one evening, sat out on the porch, wind rustling Richie’s hair like autumn leaves, but leaving Eddie’s untouched, each hair frozen in time and space.

 

Richie had fallen asleep outside, a combination of the lake’s lullaby-ripples, and the warmth of the balmy night. He’d slept deeply, watched over by the moon and the stars, and woken up with a crick in his neck and freezing hands.

 

Eddie was no-where to be seen, but Richie was unbothered. Eddie made a habit of wandering the moors at night, unbound by the mortal need to sleep, dream and recharge. He was free to roam as he saw fit, truly a being of the night, drifting amongst the dreaming lambs and the trees that stretched humbly towards the moon. He always returned, though. Returned to the house that he’d died in, and, by association, to Richie.

 

Richie hauled his heavy bones into the house, and up the rickety stair case, desperate to change out of the stale smelling clothes from the night before. He could hear the clanging of something metallic, and Eddie’s high and bright whistling, like a bell beckoning Richie into the room. When Richie cautiously pushed the door open, his mouth opened in shock.

 

While he slept, the summer sky had materialised on his bedroom walls. Fluffy marshmallow clouds on a cornflower blue sky.

 

Eddie was standing in the corner of the room, paintbrush in hand, looking somewhat guilty.

 

“I didn’t think you’d wake up yet. You don’t normally wake up before 7 or so”

 

“Eddie what the _hellllll”_ Richie drawled, eyes scanning the room in astonishment.

                                  

“Do you like it?” Eddie asked, eyes and voice earnest and so sugary sweet Richie couldn’t take it.

 

“I so wish I could hug you right now, this is fuckin’ torture, s’what it is. This is _beautiful,_ Eds. It’s – I don’t have the words”

 

“Heh. The oven mitts are downstairs, so, I suppose … I’m glad you like it, though. I was worried you’d hate it and think that I’d over-stepped, or something”

 

“No! Not at all. It’s … thank you, Eddie. Seriously, thank you. This might be the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me”

“I know you hate painting and I used to paint a bit, when I was, y’know, so … I thought I’d help you out a bit”

 

“You’ve done more than just _help me out,_ Eds, yowza!”

 

Richie sincerely wished Eddie was wearing those damn oven gloves, as he wanted nothing more than to squeeze his hand and never let go.

* * *

The kitchen hated Richie, and, by all accounts, the feeling was pretty mutual. Laying a new floor down had been an absolute nightmare, considering the fact that the room was bizarrely shaped, so Richie had had to painstakingly cut each piece of timber out with a circle-saw to the exact measurements. This had taken longer than Richie cared to admit, but he had eventually finished, and the glossy oak floorboards smiled up at him, thanking him for his time and effort. Painting the kitchen was a breeze in comparison, throwing a white emulsion onto the walls before covering it with a blueish-grey, light and bright enough for a kitchen, but not an emotionless white. The back wall was the only one that was still just white emulsion, and Richie had planned to paint it grey in the afternoon.

 

That had been his plan, before he heard an almighty crash echo throughout the house, a metallic clang, and then a horrified yell.

 

“Eddie?! Eddie, are you okay?” Richie shouted, running down the stairs at light speed, expecting to find Eddie contorted in pain, or gone from the house entirely, or a number of equally as horrifying possibilities.

 

What he found when he rounded the corner, and burst into the kitchen, was blueish-grey paint covering practically every surface in the kitchen, and a very forlorn looking Eddie staring at the mess.

 

“What – What _happened_ in here?!”

 

Eddie looked up at Richie with pleading, guilty eyes, wringing his hands together.

 

“I… I tried to walk through the wall carrying the paint and … Well, I suppose paint cannot travel through walls”

 

“What have I told you about using the _effing_ doors!” Richie bellowed, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder to the door that he had just sprinted through.

 

His new floor, his expensive oak floorboards that he had laboured over for weeks, ruined. The oven had thankfully not been installed yet, and sat in its protective plastic packaging, but even that was splattered with paint. The clock was covered in paint. The gas stove that Richie had been using to cook was covered in paint. In short, everything was covered in a sheen of grey paint.

 

“I was trying to help,” Eddie mumbled, mouse-small, “You said you loved your new bedroom walls and I thought – I thought I’d save you some work because I know how much you hate painting and – I am a catastrophe”

 

Richie felt awful.

 

“Naw, Eds, you’re not. C’mon, it’s not that bad. I can get some white spirit on the floor, that’ll probably lift most of it, and maybe Mike will let me borrow his electric sander. Hey now, Eds, c’mon, you look like you’re going to cry, you’re killing me”

 

“I would cry if I could”

 

“Can you cry?”

 

“No, because if I could, I would be doing so now”

 

Richie opened one of the now grey kitchen drawers, and pulled out Eddie’s oven mitts. He passed them over to Eddie, who reluctantly slipped them onto his hands, the scrunch of concentration that Richie had grown so fond of etched onto his face.

 

“I’m gonna hold your hand now,” Richie announced, before taking Eddie’s hand in his, “I promise that I’m not mad with you. I’m just – I’m just a bit frustrated but it’s not the end of the world. Kitchens come and go but Eddie Spaghetti’s are forever”

 

“Is that a joke … because I am dead?” Eddie asked, voice hesitant but Richie watched as a smile formed on his face, slowly, like a flower opening to pray to the sun.  

 

“It wasn’t ‘sposed to be” Richie shrugged, hand still gripping onto Eddie’s mitted-hand tightly.

 

“Are you sure you’re not mad with me?”

 

“I promise”

* * *

One thing that Richie soon came to learn was that Eddie loved music. Richie often heard Eddie’s ethereal whistling echoing around the house, or heard him humming little ditty’s that Richie didn’t recognise. Sometimes Eddie sang properly, a surprisingly rich and strong tenor that stirred things in Richie’s heart that had been dormant for years.

 

One day, when Richie was sanding the grey paint off the floorboards in the kitchen and singing along to Higher Ground by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie’s voice announced his presence before Richie was even aware of him being in the room, a habit of Eddie’s that he was growing slowly used to.

 

“This music sounds so different to the kind of things I used to listen to when I was younger”

 

Richie turned off the electric sander, before turning the radio up, Anthony Kiedis’ voice booming out of the speaker. Eddie looked vaguely alarmed, before tapping the toe of his boot slightly, face screwed in concentration, as if he was sampling the music like wine, trying to decide whether he liked the taste of the beat or not. Richie hopped around on alternate feet, pretending to slap an imaginary bass, his face screwed up in his best approximation of ‘bass face’. He wasn’t sure that Eddie would know what bass face was, but he didn’t care. Eddie watched Richie with wide, half-confused half-amused eyes, the toe of his left boot still tap-tap-tapping away to the beat.

 

The song drew to a close soon after, and Richie bounced over to the radio and turned it off.

 

“So, d’ya like it?”

 

“It’s … interesting. It’s different, absolutely, but … it’s good. It’s got a good beat, I like the rhythm. I … rather liked his voice,” Eddie stuttered, and Richie was sure that if it were possible for Eddie’s face to flush with embarrassment, it would be doing so right now, “but one thing I don’t understand is where you put the records in that tiny machine? Are records really tiny now?”

 

“Records? Why would there be records?” Richie asked as confusion washed over him in waves, before realising that Eddie had no idea what a twenty-first century radio looked like.

 

“Oh, no, this is a radio, not a record player. Some people still use records, but those people are called ‘ _hipsters’_ and you wouldn’t like them. But this is a radio, you know what a radio is, right?”

 

“Yes, Richard, I know what a radio is. I wasn’t born 700 years ago” Eddie groaned, rolling his eyes.

 

“Jus’ checkin’, jus’ checkin’. So you know how radios work, right? Like … the music is in the air? Radio waves and all that jazz?”

 

“The music is in the _air?!_ ” Eddie spluttered, eyes wide like dinner plates.

 

“I thought you said you knew what radios were?!”

 

“Well, I know what they _are,_ I never professed to know how they _work”_

 

Richie can’t help but laugh at the expression on Eddie’s face, a picture of exasperation mixed with confusion, and he is semi-horrified by the realisation that he wants to kiss it off Eddie’s face.

 

_Well that’s new._

 

Richie tries to squash all ghost-kissing desires deep into his brain into a box marked ‘ _bad idea’_ but he knows that that box has a habit of refusing to remain closed and springing open unexpectedly.

 

In his desperation to sway his attention from Eddie’s grumpy, kissable face, Richie cranks the radio up even further, switching the station to the all-day 80s bangers station he’d found a few weeks ago. Bonnie Tyler’s voice filtered out of the speakers, and Richie lip-synced along with her as she lamented about the fact that she didn’t have a street-wise Hercules. Eddie watched as if transfixed, eyes following the minutia of Richie’s movements but standing on the side lines, not joining in Richie’s one-man dance party.

 

“Dance with me!” Richie yelled, waving his arms erratically in the air as Bonnie’s voice howled around the room.

 

“I can’t!”

 

“You can!”

 

“I can’t!”

 

“YOU CAN!” Richie practically screamed, “dance with me, Eds! Please!”

 

Richie’s pestering finally broke Eddie’s resolve, and just as the song peaked, Eddie started to dance.

 

Now it was Richie’s turn to gawp.

 

Eddie threw himself around the room wildly, feet a blur as he alternated between rhythmic walking, jumping and kicking his feet , whilst waving his arms in a jaunty swing, occasionally snapping his fingers or clapping his hands in time with the music.

 

“You’ve been holding out on me, you sneak! Look at you _go!”_ Richie yelled over the music, hardly moving, just watching Eddie spin and twist and jump.

 

“I may or may not have been quite the accomplished swing dancer when I was … y’know …” Eddie gasped, mid spin.

 

“I fuckin’ bet you were! Look at your fancy feet!”

 

“You’re not so bad yourself,” Eddie laughed, performing a particularly complicated piece of footwork, and peeking up at Richie with his tongue caught between his teeth.

 

“Damn straight, look at us, a couple-a movers and shakers, but damn, Eds, you shake it the best. You gotta teach me.”

 

Eddie laughed as he span past Richie, and Richie followed him, shimmying his shoulders and shaking his hips in a way that he assumed looked ridiculous, but the way Eddie’s eyes lingered on the swivel of his hips suggested otherwise.

 

The song finished, and a slow ballad started to play – all slow, smooth guitar and mellow vocals.

 

Richie, gasping from exertion, stopped dancing, and so did Eddie, who looked exactly the same as he always did, not a hair or piece of fluff out of place.

 

“How do we dance to this one? It’s a bit slow, Rich”

 

An idea crashed into Richie’s brain at warp speeds.

 

“Hang on”

 

Richie disappeared downstairs, and returned clasping Eddie’s oven mitts in his hands.

 

“Put these on” Richie instructed Eddie, like he always did, and once Eddie had put the mitts on, he grabbed his hands and placed them on his shoulders.

 

“We gotta slow dance to songs like this, them’s the rules”

 

“Uh … but we’re both … you aren’t a … I’m not a woman”

 

“I won’t tell if you won’t”

 

Eddie didn’t say anything in response, but he didn’t move his hands, either. Knowing that he couldn’t put his hands on Eddie’s waist like he wanted to, Richie settled for placing his hands over Eddie’s mitts, on his shoulders. They swayed back and forth.

 

“Are you like me?” Eddie whispered, voice barely loud enough for Richie to hear over the music.

 

“Depends what you mean by that, Spaghetti. Am I dead? No. Am I a wicked dancer? Yes. You gotta be more specific”

 

“You are a brute! You know exactly what I mean”

 

“Do you mean ‘do I fall in love with men’?”

 

Eddie hesitated for a second, before nodding the affirmative.

 

“Then yes, I am like you. But I also fall in love with women. I like ‘em both. Greedy like that”

 

“Is that … is that possible?”

 

“Sure is, sugar!”

 

Eddie closed his eyes, and Richie was sure that if Eddie could cry, this would be another occasion where he would be doing so.

 

“I only … I only fall in love with men. I had – Rupert. We – he died. I never got to say goodbye”

 

A heavy sort of sadness settled in the room. Eddie’s eyes, downcast and lidded, refused to meet Richie’s. They stood in the middle of the room, touching but not really, dancing but not really, in silence.

 

“I hate that I can’t hold you, Eddie”

 

“I hate that you can’t hold me, too”

* * *

Something changed after they danced together. Not a seismic shift, but a small tremor. Eddie told Richie about Rupert, and how they’d lived together in relative sin, and as he spoke, he’d screwed up his face as if willing himself to cry, to feel something. Richie cried enough for the both of them.

 

A few days later, it was a lazy Sunday, and Richie is listening to a local Scottish radio station sat out on the porch with Eddie in a comfortable silence.

 

 “I don’t know what everyone else’s plans are for the afternoon, but I’m off to have a lovely roast dinner!” the radio host announces, before signing off for the day.

 

“Oh, I do miss a roast dinner” Eddie announces wistfully, rubbing at his stomach comically.

 

“What’s a roast dinner?”

 

“ _You’ve never had a roast dinner?!”_

 

“Uh… no? Should I have? What is it?”

 

Eddie abruptly stands up, and walks back into the house, listing off all the components of a roast dinner as he walks. When they get to the kitchen, Eddie marches straight over to the fridge and, without opening it, sticks his head right through the door, before also sticking his left hand straight through the metal, as if the fridge was not a solid object at all. Richie is sure that there will never be a day that he doesn’t find that unbelievably funny.

 

“You have all the vegetables, but the only meat you have is … this!” Eddie pulls his head back through the fridge door, looking at his hand triumphantly, only to find that his hand is empty.

 

“I keep forgetting I cannot move things through other solid objects” Eddie deadpans, smacking his forehead in embarrassment.

 

Richie cackles at him, before moving to open the fridge himself, and seeing a lonely looking pepperami lying on the bottom of the fridge. With Eddie’s help, Richie manages to cook the roast dinner without too much issue. The only time Eddie screeches at him is when he pours way too much oil into the roasting pan for the potatoes, but that issue is quickly rectified. After a few hours, the meal is prepared, and Richie plates up feeling overwhelmingly guilty that Eddie can’t share in the meal that he helped to prepare. Eddie assures him that he doesn’t miss eating that much, and ushers Richie into the dining room, where the new dining table stands proudly in the middle of the room. Richie places his plate on the table, before realising that he’d forgotten cutlery and a glass of water. Eddie, who had been standing behind his chair, follows him into the kitchen, walking straight through the table, and babbling nonsense about how Richie was about to experience something truly magical.

 

When Richie returned to the dining table, he found that his food was now burnt beyond recognition, the fresh vegetables that had been lying on his plate mere seconds ago now transformed into a smoky black sludge.

 

“What in God’s name …” Richie muttered, staring at the burnt food in disbelief as the cutlery slipped from his hand and fell to the floor with a thud.

 

Richie looks at Eddie, then back to the ruined food on his plate, then back to Eddie. Without saying anything, he ran back into the kitchen, grabbing a piece of broccoli, before charging back into the living room and throwing the broccoli directly at Eddie’s head.

 

The broccoli fell to the floor.

 

Or, more accurately, the broccoli that was now a black, burnt sludge fell to the floor.

 

“ _For fucks sake!”_

* * *

Richie stays up late that night, sleepy eyes glued to his computer, scrolling through useless website after useless website before he lands on the first thing that looks even remotely promising 16 pages into the google search.

 

**_ Stanley Uris – Corporeal Reanimator _ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this entire chapter listening to Yeah! by Usher on repeat. I don’t know how that impacted the writing, but without a doubt, it probably did. Do with this knowledge what you will.
> 
> I changed the name of this fic because I decided I didn't think the old one fit the story anymore. Hopefully that isn't too jarring.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> pls come chat with me on tumblr @ queen-sock if ya like


	5. Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed?

To: **stanelyuris@outlook.com**

From: **trashmouthtozier@gmail.com**

 

_Dear Stan The Reanimating Man,_

_Howzzit. My name is Richard Wentworth Tozier The First, and I’m being haunted._

_Well, haunted is a strong word. There’s a guy that lives in (deads in?) my house who insists he died in the 1940s. I can’t touch him, and he walks through my walls when I’m in the shower and last night he burnt all my food when he floated through the table. Burnt broccoli is no laughing matter, Stanley. So I’m inclined to believe him._

_Now, your website has confused me somewhat. Are you a wizard? Do you use a wand? Or are you some sort of reverse exorcist? It says that you’re a ‘corporeal reanimator’ but that just makes me think of Victor Frankenstein and we all know how that went down. I’m getting distracted._

_I need your help._

_Can you come and visit me and Eds? Eds is the ghost, the dead dude, the broccoli burner etc etc. I’ll tell him about you. I’ll pay for your transport, of course._

_I’ve attached my contact details, so please do ring me or reply to this email ASA fuckin’ P._

_Anxiously awaiting your response,_

_Richie_

 

Stan sat back in his comfy office chair and sighed.

 

A wizard _._

Stanley Uris was many things, but a wizard he was not. He was perfectly clear on the website, and had provided a lengthy FAQ that went to great lengths to explain what corporeal reanimation was, and why it should not be confused with magic, witchcraft or necromancy. He was _not_ a necromancer. He was a scientist. A man of rationality, of logic and mathematical precision, and he just so happened to be able to reanimate the dead.

 

He tapped out a short reply, and hit send, and before opening google to check flight times to Scotland.

 

 

To: **trashmouthtozier@gmail.com**

From: **stanelyuris@outlook.com**

 

_Dear Richard Tozier,_

_I’m not a wizard. Please click here to re-read my FAQs. I am a corporeal reanimator. I can manipulate energy, I don’t have a wand, and I don’t know any spells._

_I have booked a flight to Scotland that lands next Wednesday at 21:00 (9pm). You can pick me up from Edinburgh International Airport. I’ll be staying with you. I am a vegetarian._

_Dr. Stan Uris._

 

* * *

 

When Richie had shown Eddie the reply from Stan Uris, he’d expected Eddie to be elated. He hadn’t expected Eddie to immediately disappear through the floorboards.

 

“Eds! You know I hate it when you do that,” Richie yelled, charging down the stairs into the kitchen where Eddie was pacing back and forth, hands clasped behind his back.

 

“We don’t know anything about this man, Richie. We don’t know who he is or what his motivations are or what he might …”

 

“What he might what?”

 

“What he might do to me,” Eddie finished in a whisper, staring at Richie with eyes as wide as dinner plates.

 

Richie opened and closed his mouth, failing to find the right words, the words that would reassure Eddie that he wouldn’t let anything happen to him, that he wouldn’t let a wizard zap him into the great beyond without their consent, that he’d fight tooth and nail to keep Eddie right there, with him, in their little house on the moors.

 

Because that’s what it was, really. Their house. The walking through the walls, the singing jaunty songs at three in the morning when he was trying to sleep, ad the way the ceiling lights would flicker violently when Eddie descended through the floorboards, maybe Richie had grown used to it. Maybe he’d laugh until his stomach hurt when Eddie pretended to get stuck half way through a wall, waving his limbs pitifully. Maybe his heart would beat erratically when he’d slip the oven mitts onto Eddie’s hands and make a show of pulling him out of the wall, and maybe his breath would catch in his throat when Eddie faux-swooned, batting his eyelashes and simpering, “ _my hero, Rich,”_ before laughing, high and bright and infectious. Maybe, in the dead of night,  Richie would watch Eddie from his bedroom window as he walked around the moors, as he shone in the dark like a star. A mass of burning rock that Richie had grown … _used_ to. Maybe.

 

He’d never say as much, though.

 

“Rich?”

 

Richie blinked.

 

Eddie was still waiting for a response.

 

“I won’t let him hurt you,” Richie said, “I won’t. I won’t let him take you away”

 

“Do you promise?” Eddie replied, mousey-small and honeyvoiced.

 

“I promise, Eds. So long as there’s breath in my lungs and blood in my veins I won’t let him take you away from me”

 

* * *

 

 

Stan’s plane was late. Richie had been waiting in the arrivals lounge of Edinburgh International Airport for over an hour now. Mike was waiting in his truck, Mr. Chips curled up on the passenger seat, BBC Radio 4 filtering out of the speaker, a picture of perfect calm. Richie was not calm, having convinced himself thirty minutes ago that sending a stranger several hundreds of pounds over PayPal under the guise of transporting them over an ocean to help him with his ghost problem was reckless at best and downright idiotic as worst.

 

Fifteen more minutes pass, and Richie was seconds away from turning around and giving up when a man with a mass of curly hair and large, thin rimmed glasses appeared in front of him.

 

“Richard?”

 

“Holy shit you came”

 

The man smiled, a sly quirk of the lips.

 

“I did. Are you ready to go?”

 

Richie grinned, “Fuck yeah, now, lemme tell you about my Eds --”

 

* * *

 

The drive from Edinburgh to Skye was long, over five hours, but Richie found himself silent for most of it. Banished to the back seat of Mike’s truck at the first rest-stop after Stan complained of feeling car sick, his many attempts to join in the animated conversation between Stan and Mike had failed miserably.

 

“Yoo’v got a PhD? Are ye a medical doctor or…?”

 

“My PhD was in plasma physics, so I’d be useless in any emergency that didn’t involve electromagnets”

 

“So yer a smart one, then?”

 

“I suppose so”

 

Mike and Stan continue to chatter, the conversation ebbing and flowing effortlessly. A torturous four hours later and they’d arrived back at Richie’s little house. Richie hopped out of the truck, knees buckling immediately under the weight of his leaden bones. The lights in the house were on, and Richie could see a lacquered shadow pacing back and forth in the kitchen window.

 

“He’s in,” Richie muttered, gesturing towards the window.

 

Stan and Mike glanced towards the kitchen, but predictably, Eddie had disappeared. Richie suppressed a groan.

 

“Have you met him?” Stan asked Mike as he walked back to the truck, swinging the back door open and hauling his duffle bag towards him.

 

“Nae, I haven’t. I have – I’ve met other ghosts though, other … people”

 

“Oh?”

 

“My parents died in a house fire years ago. Ah still see my maw walkin’ around sometimes”

 

Richie, growing increasingly impatient, cut Stan off before he could reply.

 

“Maybe we could discuss Mike’s tragic history later? Do you want me to go into the house and see if I can get Eddie to agree to show himself?”

 

Stan was silent for several moments, pulling various small electronic devices out of his bag.

 

“No, I’ll go. I want to ask him something,” Stan said, tucking a small black box into the back pocket of his jeans. He held his hand out to Richie, gesturing at the house keys clutched in his hands.

 

“Are you sure? He’s quite flighty. I really think I should –”

 

“Richie. It’s fine, I’m not going to hurt him, I just want to talk,” Stan reassured, voice soft but eyes firm, confident.

 

Richie hesitated, but gave Stan the keys nevertheless.

 

“If I hear him yelling, I’m gonna come runnin’, though, just a warning”

 

Stan said nothing, just walked purposefully to the door of the house, opened it, and shut it behind him.

 

* * *

 

 When Stan had first walked through the door into the house, he’d been prepared to have to stomp right back out again. Most of the people who called him out were frauds, or had particularly noisy water pipes. He’d give them the number of a particularly good plumber, and bill them for wasting his time.

 

The house was still. Too still.

 

“Edward?”

 

Silence.

 

“Edward, my name is Stan. I’m here to help you. Your friend Richie called me, can you come out?”

 

Still nothing.

 

“Okay, Edward. I’m going to turn off all the lights now, is that okay?”

 

Silence, but then a click, and the lights in the house all flicked off at once. Stan shut the fuse cupboard, and stepped into the centre of the room. The small black box in his back pocket started vibrating violently, letting off a high-pitched hum.

 

“ _You can call me Eddie, if you want”_

 

Stan span on his heels, and there he was, as if he’d always been there. A man, around Stan’s height, maybe smaller, dressed in a khaki uniform.

 

“Eddie?”

 

“Richie said you wouldn’t hurt me but I don’t think I trust you”

 

“I know. You don’t have to trust me yet, but I need to ask you a favour. Can you hold this?”

 

Stan plucked the black box from his pocket and held it out to Eddie, who stared at it.

 

“What is it?”

 

“It’s an energy converter. I want to see what type of energy you are, it’ll help me better understand how to help you”

 

“What type of … energy? What does that mean?” Eddie asked, taking several cautious steps towards Stan.

 

“Have you ever heard the theory that energy cannot be created or destroyed?”

 

Eddie shook his head.

 

“Basically, all living things are infused with energy,” Stan continued, still holding out the black box, “and when living things die, the energy doesn’t just disappear. Sometimes it seeps into the ground and helps trees and plants to grow, sometimes it evaporates into the sky and causes electrical storms and sometimes it gets stuck”

 

“Is that me? Am I stuck?”

 

Stan nodded his head.

 

“You’re stuck, or, your energy is stuck, and the longer you’ve been stuck, the stronger your electrical current has become. What you are now is basically just a big ball of pure energy, and this energy can represent itself in reality as various different types depending on the context”

 

As he was talking, Stan felt Eddie take the black box out of his hands.

 

“Good, so in a few moments we should –“

 

* * *

 

 A few seconds after Stan disappeared into the house, all of the lights in the house turned off at once.

 

“Are you soft on him?” Mike asked, breaking the silence.

 

“Soft on Stan? Naw,” Richie replied, knowing that that wasn’t what Mike was asking, but choosing to avoid the question nevertheless.

 

“Not him. Eddie. Are you soft on him?”

 

“He’s a ghost”

 

“That’s not what I asked”

 

“He’s dead”

 

“That’s not what I asked”

 

Richie slumped against Mike’s truck, leaning his head back on the passenger side window.

 

“I guess I might be just a little soft on him”

 

“Stan might be able to help ye. He’s smart, he’ll figure it out”

 

A ball of pure white light shot out of the open living room window, careening into the sky before bursting into a shock of blue flame, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. Richie screamed, slamming a hand over his mouth.

 

“Eddie!”

 

Richie and Mike ran towards the house, and started pounding on the locked door with clenched fists.

 

“EDDIE!” Richie roared again, debating throwing a rock through the kitchen window and throwing himself through it, broken glass be damned. As soon as he’d found a reasonable sized rock, however, the door swung open.

 

Stan was standing on the other side of the door, a wry smile on his face, and behind him, wringing his hands, stood Eddie.

 

Mike, unfazed, stuck out his hand, “nice ta’ finally meet ye, Eddie”

 

Richie slapped at his arm, “he can’t touch you, dumbass”

 

“I was jist tryin’ tae be polite, he looks like he might boak”

 

Stan waved his hand, as if to catch their bickering in his hands. Mike and Richie fell silent, expectant.

 

“I know how to help you”

 

* * *

 

It took Stan five attempts to explain to Richie what he’d already explained to Eddie.

 

“So he’s just … energy?”

 

“Yes, Richie”

 

“So … he could like, power my TV?”

 

“No… it’s not that kind of energy,” Stan said, exasperated, before picking Richie’s phone up off the table.

 

“Look, if I pan the camera over you and Mike, you both look entirely normal, yes?”

 

Mike waved at the camera, and Richie pouted.

 

“You look lovely,” Stan deadpanned, before panning the camera over to where Eddie was hovering in the corner of the room, “and when I pan it over to him,”

 

The phone screeched, a shimmery metallic sound, and the same pure white light that had erupted out of the living room window filled the screen.

 

“In some ways, Eddie is light energy. Here, his energy is made up of photons. He is pure light energy, but if you touch him,” Stan stood up, and walked purposefully through Eddie’s body. Eddie shrieked, and disappeared through the wall.

 

Stan held up his arm, and motioned to Richie, “touch my arm.”

 

Richie did.

 

“Jesus fuck that’s hot”

 

“Yup. That’s thermal energy. When you touch Eddie, or when he touches you, it burns because his energy vibrates your living particles much more than they normally vibrate, so it generates heat”

 

“I wish I’d paid attention in physics at school,” Richie muttered, throwing his hands up in the air dramatically, “well, what’s your big grand plan to bring Eddie back to the world of the flesh?”

 

“I’m going to turn Eddie’s energy back into matter. Have you heard of the equation E equals MC squared?”

 

“Uh … was that that dude with the moustache?”

 

“Yes, it was the dude with the moustache. Well, I’ll be using that equation and putting Eddie’s energy through a process that is sort of like the reverse of a nuclear bomb. In his current state, he’s like an exploding nuclear bomb in stasis, so I need to reverse that process.”

 

At that, a very panicked looking Eddie flies through the wall.

 

“I’m … I’m a bomb? Could I hurt someone?”

 

“No, no you’re quite stable, I just need to –” Stan tries, holding his hands up as if to calm Eddie, but it doesn’t work.

 

Eddie starts pacing around the room, muttering to himself, and it’s then that Richie remembers when Eddie died.

 

“Eddie, can I talk to you in the kitchen?” Richie asks, not waiting for a response, already half way to the kitchen. Eddie follows wordlessly.

 

Richie shuts the door behind him, and Eddie floats through the wall.

 

“Richie, Rich, I don’t want to hurt you, maybe I should leave, maybe I should go out onto the moors, away from everything, away from you, I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want –”

 

“Eddie!” Richie cut him off, and thrust the oven mitts at a very forlorn looking Eddie.

 

“You’re not going to hurt me, you could never hurt me. You could _never,”_ Richie said, sincerity dripping from his words like honey. He grabbed at Eddie’s oven-mitted hands, clasping them between his own, and wished for the thousandth time that there was nothing separating them.

 

Eddie blinked, eyes dry, face perfect, hair perfect.

 

“Please let us help you,” Richie pleased, “please let me help you”

 

“Okay,” Eddie whispered, and together, still joined at the hands, they walked back into the living room.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed!! I've made up all the science, it's all a figment of my ridiculous imagination.
> 
> Chapter title is a quotation from _Frankenstein_ by Mary Shelley.
> 
> Come natter w/ me on tumblr @ queen-sock. I'm a chatty soul.
> 
> <3


	6. awake, arise or be for ever fall’n

“This won’t hurt a bit”

 

Eddie flinches, face twisting in horror at Stan’s outstretched hand.

 

Richie scrunches his hands into fists, fingernails digging deep welts into the soft flesh of his palm.

 

He knows that Eddie’s scared. Even though his face looks as it always does, solid but not quite, flesh-coloured but not really, Richie can tell that he’s scared. He’d grown quite good at reading Eddie now, like an old paperback, dog-eared and over-read. Mike’s outside. He’s watching Mr. Chips frolic in the lake, chasing sticks and stones and his shiny red ball that Mike keeps chucking into the water. Richie watches the dog out of the corner of his eye, and, if just for a moment, he forgets.

 

But then Eddie makes a noise, a choked sort of noise, caught half-way between a whimper and a cough, and he remembers. Of course he remembers.

 

Eddie. _Eddie._ Eddie who had looked at Richie with pleading, insistent eyes, muttering “ _Rich? I -- I don’t know if I can do this_ _without you_ ” when they’d been sat outside on the decking, moon watching, stars listening.

 

Stan had erected what looked like a large metal tube in the centre of Richie’s living room. It was almost as tall as the ceiling, and Stan had babbled the whole time that it took him to build the device, hair swept off his face with a thick elastic headband, eyes sparkling. Eddie hadn’t moved for hours, just stood in the corner of the room, watching Stan like a rabbit watches a fox. Cautious, ready to skitter away into the safety of the undergrowth at a moment’s notice. Richie crouches down next to Stan, leaning close enough so that when they speak in hushed tones, Eddie won’t hear them.

 

“Are you sure this won’t hurt him?”

 

Stan didn’t look up, and continued fiddling with one of the cables.

 

“I told you. He can’t feel pain, at least, not yet”

 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean! Not _yet,”_ Richie hissed, scandalised. 

 

“Well, he might feel a, well, he might feel a _tingling_ sensation if this works”

 

“What do you mean _if!”_

 

Stan looked at him, face a careful mask of cool indifference.

 

“I told you. This is never a guarantee. Energy is -- look, energy is _complicated._ It’s far more complicated than you could ever imagine. Manipulating it, it’s hard. It’s more than hard. It’s almost impossible. It doesn’t always work”

 

“What happens if it doesn’t work?”

 

“Do you really want to know?”

 

“Should I know?”

 

Stan put the cable he was holding down, and stood up, wiping his hands on his jeans before offering one to Richie. Richie accepted it, and let Stan haul him to his feet.

 

“Richie. I want you to be prepared, for … for the worst possible outcome. There are three outcomes, as I see it. Three outcomes I’ve seen before, anyway. The one we want, the one that will _probably_ happen is that this process works and I can pull him through and he’ll be corporeal again. It could go a bit wrong, though. Bits of him might … not convert. He might be, _missing_ things”

 

“Missing things?” Richie whispered, voice faint.

 

“Maybe. _Maybe_ missing things. Probably not.”

 

“What’s the third outcome?”

 

“Well, the third outcome is that I lose him”

 

“Like, you misplace him?”

 

“Sort of. The worst outcome is that he gets absorbed into the reaction and I can’t stop it in time to pull him back out again, if that happens, we need to, _you_ need to --”

 

A shrill beeping noise cut through Stan’s words.

 

Richie grabbed his phone off the table, and glanced at the screen.

 

**From: Mike Hanlon (Plumber):**

Calm the fuck down, Rich. Breathe. I can tell that you’re freaking him out from out here.

 

Richie looked up, and locked eyes with Mike, who was still outside with Mr. Chips but was now gesturing wildly at Eddie, who still hadn’t moved.

 

“I’m calm, Staniel. I’m calm as a fucking serene stream in Norway. Explain to me again how all this works?”

 

Stan huffed, “I’ve told you this about fifty times now. The accelerator is a large circular metal chute, sort of like a waterslide, or an inside athletics track. We fire electrons into this chute, and they accelerate around a magnetic field. So, once they reach around three-hundred thousand kilometres per second, they shoot out of a small opening, bounce off a small slab of gold, and smashes into Eddie and, hopefully, he’ll be recorporialised!”

 

“So it’s based on luck?”

 

“It’s not nothing to do with luck!” Stan snapped, stalking over to the control panel of the device, “it’s not anything to do with _luck_ and everything to do with science. If my calculations are correct, and they almost always are, it’ll go without a hitch”

 

“And what if your calculations are wrong?”

 

“Well, I suppose the absolute worst case scenario is that I might accidentally create a very small black hole,” Stan said, breezily, as if he hadn’t just admitted that this process could cause the end of the world as they knew it.

 

“A black hole?!”

 

“Well, I’ve never created one before, so I have no reason to think I’ll create one now”

 

“So I assume you’ve done loads of these reanimation things before then?”

 

“Recorporealisations,” Stan corrects, “and I’ve done … enough. Enough to know I won’t create a black hole”

 

“How many is enough?”

 

“I have done six”

 

“ _SIX!”_ Richie practically screeches, a noise so high it scratches at the back of his throat.

_“_ It’s six more than you’ve ever done! Look, I need you to stop second guessing me, Rich. I’m good at this. I know exactly what I’m doing. You’ve gotta _trust_ me if you want this to work”

 

“I trust you”

 

Both Stan and Richie turn around in shock. It’s Eddie. Eddie who has barely spoken for the past seven hours, Eddie who Richie was half-expecting to disappear through the floorboards, his new favourite trick, and never appear again. Eddie, who Richie had grown … _used_ to. Eddie had become a fixture of Richie’s life in a split second, swift enough that it was unnoticeable. As reliable and constant as the tide.

 

* * *

 

They’re standing outside Richie’s house. It’s dark. The house is silent and still, a statue in the fog. Stan’s stood next to the kitchen tapping away on a thing that looked like a circuit-board. Mike caught Richie’s hand in his as soon as they’d stepped out into the garden. Eddie was inside. Eddie was inside, alone, standing inside Stan’s homemade electron collider, and Richie wasn’t with him. Richie had allowed himself to be ushered outside, like a sheep, to await further instruction.

 

He’d left Eddie alone, inside what was for all intents and purposes a large metal box, waiting to have electrons slammed into his chest at hundreds of thousands of kilometres an hour.

 

“Are we doing the right thing?” he asked no one in particular. Only the wind responded.

 

Stan was shouting through the living room window, and Richie could hear Eddie’s replies, voice floating on the breeze like autumn leaves. Scared, shaky but sure.

 

“Now, when I yell ‘hold your breath’, that’s when you’ll know the machine has been turned on”

 

“Do I actually have to hold my breath?” Eddie responds, and Stan grins.

 

“Yeah, if you breathe out you might expel some energy and then you might wake up with no lungs!”

 

Richie’s stomach drops. “Stan?” He asks, voice and hands trembling.

 

“It was a joke! Eddie, _Eddie_ , I’m joking, you don’t have to hold your breath, you’re going to be fine. We all good? We all ready? Alright then, gang, wagons roll! EDDIE! HOLD YOUR BREATH”

 

* * *

 

Nothing happened.

 

Richie expected a repeat of earlier, with the huge blooming mushroom of light, the fire in the sky, the noise. Instead, his nerves were rewarded with silence.

 

The silence stretched until it was thin and flabby, until it had wrapped its way around his throat multiple times, constricting, suffocating, until he could take it no longer.

 

“Did it work?”

 

“We haven’t been sucked into a black hole, so it worked in that respect”

 

Richie ripped a handful of grass out of the sodden earth and threw it at Stan’s head. A ridiculous display of rage.

 

“You know full fucking well that isn’t what I meant”

 

“We have to wait fifteen minutes. It needs to cool down, Eddie needs to … Eddie’s going to be in a lot of pain right now, his body is … unstable. He needs to fight it alone”

 

“He’s in pain?! If you don’t want more grass shoved down your fuckin’ oesophagus you’ll get the fuck out of my way”

 

Mike immediately yanked him back, a strong arm wrapped around Richie’s heaving chest.

 

“I know yer scared for him, kid. I know. You gotta trust Stan, okay, if he says we cannae’ go in, we cannae’ go in. He’s fine, it’s gonna be fine,” Mike muttered into Richie’s ear, low and steady.

 

“Richie, if you touch him, he’ll explode. His body isn’t stable. You’ll kill him,” Stan said, plainly.

 

Richie wrestled against Mike’s arm, occasionally yelling Eddie’s name fruitlessly into the night.

 

Fifteen minutes came and went. Stan didn’t move.

 

“What are we waiting for, Stan? I wanna go get my boy”

 

“Let him come to you, Richie,” Stan said, staring through the living room window, an odd expression on his face.

 

Richie was about to ask what was wrong, when the door swung open. A man stood in the door way. A man who was entirely naked, apart from a sheet he’d draped over himself in a sort of makeshift toga. A man with wild hair, strong shoulders and one arm carved in breathing, living, heaving flesh.

 

Eddie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very short. I'm sorry, but I didn't want to pad it out unnecessarily. 
> 
> HE'S PHYSICAL! HE'S ALIVE! Whatever will happen next ...
> 
> Thanks for reading as always!
> 
> come chat w/ me on tumblr @ queen-sock. <3


	7. I am, I am, I am

No sooner than Eddie had appeared in the doorway, he collapsed, body folding in on itself messily, a crumpled piece of paper abandoned on the deck.  Stan and Mike sprang into action immediately, loyal attendants to their fallen prize, scrambling over each other to get to Eddie first.

 

 Richie didn’t move.

 

He watched them haul Eddie to his feet, he watched them tentatively let go of Eddie’s arm, encourage him to take a small step forward, and watched Eddie fall onto the deck once more, flailing arms and buckled knees. He watched Eddie’s face twist, shifting through distress, anger, frustration, a brief visit to joy before swinging straight back to distress and the cycle began again. They seem to have forgotten him, standing slack jawed on the grass below, as they haul Eddie back to his feet and usher him back inside, sheet still wrapped tightly around his torso.

 

Dazed and confused, Richie followed them inside, dragging his feet slightly, reluctant to break the spell, anxious that this had all been a fever dream, the imaginings of a sleep-drunk brain, and that he’ll walk into the house only to wake up in his frigid bedroom, the ghostly spectre he’d grown so fond of drifting on the moors. Spectral. Not flesh but air and heat and … longing.

 

But, when he walks inside the house, Eddie’s there, an image in soft pink skin and flushed cheeks, and Richie feels sick. His stomach churns, because it’s different now. Their dynamic, the Eddie he’d grown used to over these past sprawling months, has gone. He’s disappeared, a relic of the past. Now, sitting on his new couch, protective plastic sheeting crackling underneath him, is an Eddie reborn. A phoenix rising from the ashes of what once was. Ten hours ago, Eddie would have walked straight through that couch, drifted through it like smoke, leaving no trail, no indication he had ever passed through. Now, he’s sat there, with Stan holding his wrist, checking his pulse.

 

_His pulse._

Richie wondered idly whether he’d notice the difference, whether he’d be able to hear the blood rushing through Eddie’s veins, whether he’d be able to hear each thump of his newly beating heart as screamed out, with voice anew, _I am I am I am._

 

It’s different now. Eddie’s talking to Stan, voice shaky and unstable, answering Stan’s torrent of questions with his newly vibrating vocal chords and _holy shit_ that’s Eddie’s voice. His real voice. His voice as it should have been, how it once was. It’s deeper than it was before, now it doesn’t melt and bleed into the air, syllables lost to the breeze, or whole words that floated skywards so that only the birds could hear.

 

“So, to address the elephant in the room, or … maybe the elephant that _isn’t_ in the room, your arm,” Stan said.

 

The space where Eddie’s arm once was, where it _should_ be, is empty. The socket is smooth, unblemished flesh, as if his body had never had any intention of sprouting another appendage. There is no indication that Eddie had ever had another arm, no indication that the recorporealisation process had gone wrong, and energy that should have manifested his left arm had been sucked away, absorbed into the reaction and lost forever.  Eddie looked vaguely concerned, and kept scratching absently at the armless shoulder-socket, as if trying to slough the skin away and allow the bone to extend and blossom like the trunk of a tree.

 

“Eds?” Richie said, voice tundra cold against the warm air, and it almost makes him jump.

 

“Richie?” Eddie replies, and it’s happy, _so_ happy that Richie starts crying on the spot. Stupid fat tears fight their way out of his left eye and chase each other down his cheek, skating on the ice of his skin before pirouetting off his chin.

 

“Are ye crying, soft lad?” Mike asks, voice honey smooth, and it just makes Richie cry more.

 

Several minutes lost to Richie’s sobs later, and he’s crouched in front of Eddie, who’s still sat on the couch.

 

“How do you feel, Eds?”

 

“Honestly? Rather weird. My arm, my … my no arm itches and I can’t scratch it properly and it’s driving me insane”

 

“Oh, that’ll be energy residue. There will be some left over energy hanging around that area for a few days, maybe a few weeks, a few months at a push and _definitely_ not more than a year. It’ll stop eventually,” Stan supplied over his shoulder, already knee-deep in plates of metal and large segments of complicated looking circuit board.

 

“Very reassuring,” Eddie replied sardonically, and they continued to bicker back-and-forth, playful stuff with no real bite, but Richie wasn’t listening.

 

From where he’s crouched, Richie realises with a jolt of excitement tinged with fear that he could reach out and touch Eddie. He could place his hand on Eddie’s knee, and it wouldn’t fall straight through to the couch. If only he were brave enough, he could reach out and feel Eddie’s skin, soft and warm and _alive_ , under his fingertips for the first time. For the first time, he could pull Eddie to his chest and cradle him, he could poke him in the stomach when he’s being fussy, or he could grab his hand and close his eyes and _breathe_ when they’re lying outside on the grass, listening to the grasshoppers.

 

“Rich? Are you listening?”

 

“Huh, wha’?”

 

Eddie pulls Richie out of his introspection with a dopy grin, all lopsided and too many teeth.

 

“Stan was asking where I was going to live now, y’know … I can live, and I was wondering whether you’d mind, and  if you do mind it’s certainly no problem, Mike’s agreed that --”

 

“Eddie?”

 

“Yes, Rich?”

 

“If you leave me I’ll never forgive you”

 

* * *

 

The morning after, Eddie still can’t walk. Richie quickly realises that he must take it upon himself to teach Eddie to walk again. Like a mother hen teaching her chick to run, Richie stands at one end of the room and yells encouragement to Eddie, who shuffles, snail slow, towards him. More than once, Eddie trips over his own feet, or slips on a rogue corner of the carpet, and falls to the floor, comically slow, arms flailing, mouth caught in a surprised ‘O’. Richie always catches him, sweeping him up in his arms.

 

Sooner than Richie could have expected, Eddie manages it. He walks, unaided, with gritted teeth and a knotted brow, from one end of the living room to the other. He’s almost panting by the time he reaches Richie, but he’s done it. Richie hoots with joy, and wraps his arms around Eddie’s waist and hoists him up into the air, a trophy. Eddie squeals, and smacks at Richie with his one-arm but he’s grinning, a grin so wide Richie’s sure it’s going to split his face in two. Eddie still looks unstable, bambi legs wobbling slightly with each step, but he’s mobile. He stumbles around the small house, running his fingertips over every surface, touch-starved and greedy, he picks up seemingly random objects and holds them to his nose, smelling them, he eats more than his fair share of dinner every evening, and Richie’s punched in the stomach when he realises that what he feels for Eddie isn’t platonic. It isn’t anywhere close to platonic, having skated past that junction several hundred miles ago, and Richie watches Eddie as he walks purposefully into the kitchen, mug in hand, babbling something about learning to swim, and Richie knows it’s not platonic, it’s not anywhere close, because it’s love.

 

* * *

 

A loud crash comes from the kitchen, and Richie sits up in bed with a start. He hasn’t heard that kind of crash since Eddie became physical over a week ago. Eddie can walk almost normally now, occasionally tripping over but mostly he strides with determination. Sleep-drunk, Richie charges down the stairs two at a time, desperate to lay eyes on Eddie, the physical Eddie, to dispel any fears that the last week had been nothing but a cruel trick played on an impressionable mind. Luckily, when Richie skids into the kitchen, Eddie’s standing there, a vision in tartan pyjamas, staring at a mess of ceramic shards and honey-coloured liquid on the floor.

 

“What the fuck happened, butterfingers?” Richie asked, grabbing the dustpan and brush out of the cupboard to sweep up the shards of mug.

 

“I -- you’ll laugh at me, I don’t want to tell you”

 

“Eds, I promise I would _never_ laugh at you, ever never ever”

 

“Do you promise?”

 

“I promise”

 

“I … I tried to walk through the wall”

 

Richie let out a bark of laughter, before clamping his hand over his mouth.

 

“Sorry! Sorry, I couldn’t help it. You _tried to walk through the wall?”_

 

Eddie nodded his head, morosely.

 

“I guess I was tired, I’m – I’m still not used to feeling tired, you know? It makes me feel rather odd. I guess I forgot I was … real”

 

Eddie looks so desperately sad that all the hilarious thoughts of Eddie walking full pelt at the wall evaporate from Richie’s mind.

 

“Oh, Eds. Oh sweetheart, I’m sorry”

 

The pet name falls out of Richie’s mouth before he can stop it and Eddie flinches.

 

“Shit, Eddie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, I just –”

 

“Rupert used to call me sweetheart,” Eddie replies in a reverent whisper and all the air gets punched out of Richie’s lungs. “I haven’t thought of Rupert for … I don’t know when I last thought of him”

 

“It’s okay to move on, you know?”

 

“Is it? Is it okay to move on when he never can?”

 

“Don’t you think he’d want you to be happy? To remember the fun you two had together, to remember and cherish your love but … to grieve it, and grieve him and …”

 

Richie’s words fail him, and he flails his arms, a useless attempt at expressing himself non-verbally. Eddie seems to be able to read him, though, as he hums thoughtfully. The mess on the floor glistens in the moonlight.

 

“I suppose he wouldn’t want me to be sad forever”

 

Neither of them speak, then. They clean up the mess, and Richie takes the shards of ceramic out to the outside bin, wrapped in a piece of kitchen roll. Eddie’s already upstairs when he comes back in, and Richie can hear the tap running, the sound of someone spitting toothpaste into the bowl of the sink, and then the door opens and it’s Eddie, Eddie who’s stood there in his stupid tartan pyjamas, and his old man slippers and his tousled hair and his tired eyes and he’s got toothpaste smeared on his chin and Richie can’t help it. He pulls a surprised and initially resistant Eddie into an embrace. Eddie’s stiff at first, but soon Richie can feel his muscles loosen and he becomes jellied and pliant in Richie’s grasp. They stand in the darkness of the upstairs hallway, Eddie’s face buried in Richie’s neck, with one Richie’s hands carding through Eddie’s hair, the other wrapped loosely around his shoulders.

 

“Thank you,” Eddie whispers, and it’s small, a mouse that crawls from Eddie’s mouth and squeaks in Richie’s ear.

 

“Whatcha thanking me for, Eddie Spaghetti?”

 

“For … for helping me. For being kind. I haven’t known much kindness in my life, or in my death I suppose,” Eddie laughs at himself, an ugly sort of hiccup snort that makes Richie bark out a surprised laugh, too, and then they’re laughing at themselves, and each other, but they’re still hugging, anchored to each other in the tempest of confusion that their lives have become in the past few months.

 

“I am so very lucky that you bought this house,” Eddie says, staring at Richie with glittering eyes and Richie tries to convince himself to kiss Eddie, caution be damned, but he can’t because he remembers.

 

He remembers the letter he got the day before, sat in his bedside drawers.

 

Instead, he presses a chaste kiss to Eddie’s forehead and pulls away.

 

“Goodnight, Eds”

 

* * *

 

Richie only manages three hours of pretending to sleep, of staring at the ceiling and watching the shadows dance, before he gets up. He tiptoes across the room, cringing slightly as the door groans open, and then shuffles across the landing to Eddie’s room. The door was wide open, so Richie pokes his head in only to discover the bed empty. It wasn’t made though, and when Richie presses his hand to the mattress he finds that it’s still warm.

 

He immediately knows where Eddie is.

 

He walks back to his room, less concerned about the groaning floorboards now, and opens the curtains. He spots Eddie immediately. He’s standing at the mouth of the lake, throwing stones into it, watching them skate across the surface and then disappear into the depths, never to be seen again. Richie crosses his arm, and leans against the support beam, and watches.

 

Eddie looks beautiful. His skin, solid but pale as marble slate, shines in the frosty light of the moon. Richie watches him walk towards the grass, and then, suddenly, he’s off, sprinting towards the trees in the distance that border the forest, the forest that Richie knows Eddie spent a lot of time in immediately after his death. Richie watches him, watches him sprint like a cheetah towards the darkness of the trees, before he skids on his heel, and sprints right back again. Right back to Richie. Right back to their home.

 

Richie stoops, and opens the bedside cabinet and pulls the letter out. The bright white paper practically glows in the moonlight.

 

_Dear Mr Tozier,_

_I am writing to inform you that your visa (business - fixed term) is set to expire in less than three months. You will need to return to your home country before the given date, or risk criminal sentencing._

_Please be advised that, should you wish to extend your residency in the United Kingdom, you must apply to do so from your home country (The United States of America)._

_Please do contact my office if you have any further questions,_

_Yours Sincerely,_

_James Brown_

_Immigration Officer_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY! I managed to get another chapter up, I have a busy work week next week so might not be able to update until next weekend. Hopefully this'll be enough until then!
> 
> Lemme know what you think!
> 
> come chat with me on tumblr @ queen-sock, I'm a chatty soul
> 
> thank you for reading <3


	8. men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI: There is a small mention of vomit in this chapter, nothing too graphic though.

Richie doesn’t tell Eddie about the letter. He debates throwing it in the bin, tearing it into a thousand tiny pieces so that the words are no longer readable, so that Eddie will never discover the secret that gnaws at Richie’s gut. He’s leaving. It’s an inevitability. The sort of inevitability that feels distant but immediate all at once. When he leaves, part of him will wither away, the part of him that exists when he’s with Eddie, the part of him that’s soft around the edges, the part of him that has been nurtured by cold Scottish air and Eddie’s laughter. But he’s leaving. It’s out of Richie’s control, and no matter how much he feels for Eddie, no matter how much wants to squash his inhibitions deep down into a box labelled _never open again,_ he knows there’s no point. 

He’s leaving. In less than three months, he’ll be walking through the airport concourse, bag in hand, and Eddie won’t be with him. He’s leaving. He’ll be climbing the metal staircase, boarding the plane, collapsing into his assigned seat, asking the hostess to bring him three of those miniature bottles of whiskey that are no bigger than his thumb, because he’s leaving. The thought that all of this was temporary, an ephemeral ripple in the ocean of his life, turned the cornflakes Richie was eating into razor blades. The spiky edges of the cereal clawed at Richie’s throat, leaving it raw. Eddie sits opposite him, wearing one of Richie’s fleeces, far too big on his smaller frame, and he blurts it out before he can stop himself.

“You need new clothes”

The _because I’m leaving, and soon you won’t be able to borrow mine_ goes unsaid. 

Eddie blinks, hand frozen in place half way between his bowl and his mouth, and Richie watches the milk slosh off his spoon in slow motion.

“Clothes?” 

“New clothes. Clothes of your own, so you’re not always borrowing mine,” Richie says, and it’s robotic, a cool and metallic sound that feels foreign in his mouth.

“Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to – I didn’t realise that you minded. Of course, we’ll get me my own clothes. I don’t have any money though…” 

Richie feels like an ass. Eddie’s completely abandoned his bowl now, cereal condemned to become soggy and forgotten. Richie shoves his own bowl to the side, and leans forward across the dining table, desperate to push himself into Eddie’s space. 

“No, I just thought you’d be more comfortable in clothes that feel more … you”

“I suppose you’re right,” Eddie replies, his voice brusque, and before Richie can say anything else he’s pushing away from the table. 

“The money problem still stands, though. I haven’t got any to pay for these new clothes so--” 

“I’m paying, obviously. I’ll pay. I want to pay, Eds. I’ll drive us to Edinburgh and we’ll pick you out a fancy new wardrobe and you’ll look …”

The sentence gets stuck between Richie’s teeth. Eddie looks at him strangely, head cocked to the side, a dog who has misunderstood a command, and Richie just shrugs at him.

“You’ll look like you”

“Do I not already look like me?” Eddie says, but he’s laughing now. Not laughing exactly, but his eyes are crinkled at the edges, an indication that Richie has learnt means that any second now, Eddie Kaspbrak is going to bare his teeth and dazzle the world with a smile that looks like sunshine on a winter morning. The smile comes, and Richie basks.

“You look just like you”

“You’re being weird, Richie” 

“I know” Richie mutters, but it’s muffled by the top of Eddie’s head. 

They come together like magnets. An invisible force that tugs them together, that neither can see but both can feel. On the couch in the evenings, sprawled across each other, in the kitchen, dancing around each other, hands on waists, in the garden, watching the lake glitter in the moonlight, with hands clasped and eyes closed. Now, in the dining room, Richie’s standing over Eddie, arms wrapped around his shoulders. 

Eddie pulls away, just barely, and looks up at him and Richie’s stomach flips, _oh God, oh God, oh God, he’s going to do it, he’s going to lean up, he’s going to –_

But of course, Eddie doesn’t kiss him, he just smiles again, but that’s practically the same thing.  

 

* * *

 

The drive to Edinburgh goes less than well. Eddie panics when they hit the motorway, hands gripping his knees, knuckles white and straining against his skin. Richie reaches out to grasp his hand, an attempt at comfort, but Eddie screeches at Richie to keep both hands on the wheel in such a melodramatic way that Richie erupts into snorting laughter. Eddie glares at him, but, out of the corner of his eye, Richie notices that Eddie’ knuckles have shifted from white to pink. 

They park up in a small town on the outskirts of Edinburgh town center, and get the tram. Sitting together, close enough that their knees knock and their thighs blend into one, Eddie whispers into Richie’s ear of times gone by, about how he used to get the electric tram with his mother when they’d travel into town, and about how they’d sit on the top deck and Eddie would watch the world spin by. Richie closes his eyes, letting the dulcet tones of Eddie’s voice pull him back, back to Eddie’s first life, and wonders whether, if they’d met back then, in a world so different, so hostile, if Eddie would still look at Richie with stars in his eyes.

It doesn’t take long for Eddie to discover that he loves jeans. Richie watches him walk amongst the aisles of clothing, fingers brushing the different fabrics and textures, before he disappears into the dressing room, clutching a bundle of clothing to his chest. He emerges, dressed in slim fit black jeans and a tight bottle green sweater and Richie chokes.

“I feel rather like a movie star, Rich,” Eddie says, looking at himself in the mirror, smoothing a hand over his front.

“You look like one, holy fucking _hell_ , Eddie,” Richie breathes, and it’s too much,  of course it’s too much, and he expects Eddie to flinch away from his reverent compliment but he doesn’t. He smiles.

 

* * *

 

They’re wandering around Old Town when it happens. Eddie’s practically bouncing along the street, waving his arms wildly, regaling Richie with tales of his youth when Eddie’s eyes lock onto a large memorial at the top of one of Edinburgh’s many hills.

 

_A MONUMENT TO THE FALLEN._

 

A huge piece of stone juts from the earth like a limb, engraved with hundreds of names. Wordlessly, Eddie drops the bags he was carrying neatly to the floor, and then he’s gone, half-walking half-running towards the monument. Richie watches him slam into the stone, body ricocheting off like a bullet. Richie watches Eddie drop to his knees, finger scanning the names like a toddler learning to read, and then Richie watches Eddie’s face collapse into sorrow.

Richie doesn’t need to ask, when he sidles up behind him, what Eddie has found.

 

_BRIGADIER RUPERT BRODIE._

 

The name is tiny, a small scratch on the side of the monument. But Richie knows that, for Eddie, the wound is Promethean, a brutal gash across his stomach, open, bleeding, oozing. Never healing. Never closing. 

“Is this your Rupert, Eds?”

“My Rupert,” Eddie wails in agreement, a siren call to Richie’s bleeding heart. Richie crouches, pulls Eddie’s head against his chest.

“I thought maybe they’d lied to me,” Eddie hiccups, “that he hadn’t died, that they’d just found out about us, or something. That he’d survived and moved on, but that he’d _lived._ I didn’t – he’s dead, Rich. He _died_ ” 

“I’m so sorry, my love. I’m so fucking sorry” 

Eddie disappears into introspection for several days after that. He floats around the house, looking so much like his spectre self that Richie finds himself touching Eddie more than usual, grabbing his hands or scrubbing a hand through his hair, to check that Eddie hasn’t drowned in sorrow in his room.

The day after they get back from Edinburgh Eddie doesn’t smile at all. The day after that he laughs quietly when Richie falls into the lake by accident, the day after that he smiles in sleepy thanks when Richie brings him mug after mug of tea, and the day after that he hugs Richie first.

“Thank you for being patient with me”

“Aw, shucks, Eddie Spaghetti, you’re all mushy”

Eddie swots at Richie’s shoulder but he doesn’t move.

 

* * *

 

“Have you ordered the slate yet?”

Richie blinks.

“The slate?” 

He can practically feel his father roll his eyes. 

“Yes, the slate. The slate you were supposed to order last week, that I’m coming over to help fit in 6 days? We talked about this when we were on skype a few weeks ago and you had to show me how to make the camera work” 

“Oh… _Oh fuck_. Yes, the slate. I have ordered the slate. The slate is a thing that is coming, I rang the man and spoke to the man and --”

“You didn’t order the slate, did you.”

“I did not order the slate.”

“Are you okay? You’re even more sieve brained than usual. Has something gone wrong with the house? Have you hurt yourself? Are you sick?”

“Jeez, Dad, I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m just … tired. It’s a lot of work”

His father seems to believe him, probably because it’s not entirely a lie. They agree that Richie will meet his father at the airport and drive him back to the house, before they say their goodbyes and Richie hangs up.

“Who was that?” Eddie asks, walking into the kitchen.

“Oh, uh, my dad” 

“Your dad? Your dad’s coming to visit?” 

“Yeah, I sort of … forgot? We agreed that he’d come help me do the roof and … Yeah. He’s coming in six days” 

“Oh. Should I go and stay with Mike?” Eddie asks nonchalantly, but he’s scrubbing at a dish with so much force that Richie fears it’ll shatter in his hands. 

“Mike’s? Why would you go to Mike’s?”

“To give you space with your father. You probably don’t want me rattling around your house when he’s here”

 _Our house. it’s our house, Eddie. Mine and yours,_ Richie wants to say, _what’s mine is yours. You could take my still beating heart just because you said that you wanted it, and I’d let you,_ but he doesn’t say any of that. He just says, “Oh.”

Eddie turns around, abused dish discarded in the sink, leans against the counter, arms crossed against his chest, and stares at Richie. It’s a challenge. Richie knows that, he knows that Eddie’s waiting for him to move first, a cat who bats a mouse, not interested in the kill but enjoying the game. _Your move._ Richie knows that he should tell Eddie to stay, that he should grab Eddie’s hand, and admit …

Admit the thing that he’s been sure of since Eddie stumbled out of the house, alive, alive, _alive._

( _I love you._ )

But he doesn’t.

“Do you want to ring Mike or should I?”

Eddie huffs, and Richie knows he’s lost.

 

* * *

 

The crickets are chirping, the sheep on the hills are bleating their midnight songs, the spring rain falls into the lake, a tinkly sound that echoes around the valley, but it’s still too quiet. Eddie’s been at Mike’s house since six that evening. Six long hours ago, Mike’s truck rattled down the driveway, and rattled away again, Eddie in the front, twisting in his seat, waving at Richie frantically, as if for the last time.

One day it would be.

The hours had passed slowly, like black molasses, thick and bitter. The house stands cold and quiet behind him like an empty skeleton, entirely bereft of any life. Three coffees down, and Richie’s sat on the porch, feet kicked up on the wooden railings. Fireflies dance in the moonlight, tiny flecks of luminescence copying the stars. Without warning, Two larger bulbs of light appear at the end of the track. Richie squints, watching the lights get closer and closer and closer until he realises it’s Mike. Mike’s truck trundles down the driveway, and before it comes to a stop, Richie’s up, striding over to the truck, banging on the driver-side window.

“Mike! Has something happened? Is Eddie hurt? What’s going on? What did you do to him?”

Mike kills the ignition, and winds his window down.

“What did ah do to _hem_? More like what did _he_ do to _me_! I have an entire bathroom to fit tomorrow and he kept _pokin’_ me in my sleep askin’ if ah thought ye were lonely or scared or _missing hem._ He smashed seventeen of mah mugs, Richie. Seventeen mugs,” Mike grumbles, raising an eyebrow. 

“Mike, don’t exaggerate,” Eddie says defensively, “two of them were bowls” 

Richie turns to Eddie, who has now climbed out of Mike’s van and is standing in the moonlight in his tartan pyjamas with his arms crossed protectively over his chest. 

“Are you okay?” Richie asks, voice soft, “what happened? Were you scared?”

“I think I was just a bit homesick,” Eddie says and Richie can feel his heart preparing to catapult itself out of his chest and into Eddie’s hands.

“I’m bringing him home. I can’t bear seeing the wee sod wandering around looking so lost. Ye’ll just have to invent some story to yer dad about who he es. Goodnight Eddie,” Mike says, and then he’s gone, truck bouncing down the path, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared.

“I feel like such an idiot,” Eddie says, shattering the silence that had descended around them.

“You’re not an idiot”

Neither of them speak as they take long, slow steps up towards the house. The house that had looked ghoulish mere seconds ago, the house that now welcomed them in with open arms, and a _I’m so glad you’re home._ Eddie wanders into the living room, and perches on the sofa demurely, like he hadn’t spent the last few days sprawled across it, legs up on the arm rest, hands restlessly running fingers through Richie’s hair, scratching at his scalp, as he shouted at some dumb quiz show on the television.

“What time are you picking your father up?”

Richie checks his watch, “I’ve gotta leave in about three hours”

Eddie nods. “What are we going to tell him about me?”

“We’ll just say that … you’re my lodger. A lodger in this … unfinished house. That makes sense. Total sense. It’s sort of not even a lie”

“Is that what I am? Your lodger?” Eddie shoots back, sharp as a tack.

“Well, what do you think you are?”

“Dead,” Eddie deadpans, before snorting at his own joke.

“Not anymore, my love. Not anymore”

The pet-names had become routine, words that came as easily from Richie’s mouth as Eddie’s name. A ‘baby’ here, a ‘my love’ there, once a ‘sweetheart’ but Eddie had recoiled so viscerally Richie hadn’t dared to use that one again.

One in the morning comes and goes, and Richie knows that he should sleep. But he doesn’t. Instead, he drags his duvet down the stairs and constructs a blanket nest on the couch, patting the empty space next to him, an invitation. Eddie flops down into the empty spot, and tucks his legs up underneath him. They talk in hushed tones, until the gaps between Eddie’s replies grow longer and longer and then Eddie’s snoring softly in Richie’s ear.

The phrase ‘commitment-phobe’ had been thrown around a lot in his last relationship, but that wasn’t it. Before now, Richie would have readily admitted that he’d never known contentment. He was plagued by a constant restless itch at the soles of his feet, an inability to be still, to stay safe in the same place for too long. But now, with Eddie’s head resting heavy on his shoulder, puffs of breath tickling his neck, Richie was sure that he finally knew contentment.

Eventually, Richie must have fallen asleep, because he wakes up to the beeping of his alarm, with a crick in his neck and a dead arm. Eddie’s curled himself around Richie in his sleep, head practically in Richie’s lap. He notices that Eddie’s snores had become purrs during the night, small vibrations of pleasure rumbling through both of their bodies.

“Huh? Rich? Wha’ time’zzit?” 

“It’s really early, Eds, go back to sleep,” Richie whispers, trying to manoeuvre out of Eddie’s grasp, but Eddie just holds on tighter. 

“Stay here with me”

“I can’t, Eds, I’ve gotta go pick up the old man. I don’t wanna leave you, though. I’m scared for my mugs,” Richie says, aiming for jovial but ends up sailing right past and landing on affectionate.

“I’m gonna come with you,” Eddie slurs, voice thick and croaky with sleep.

“You’re too tired, stay here,” Richie tries, but Eddie shakes his head.

“Don’t wanna stay. Don’t wanna be alone in this house, it reminds me … well, being alone here, without you, it feels like all the life gets sucked out of the house and I’m … I don’t want to feel dead again, Richie”

“… Shit”

Eddie pauses, obviously embarrassed. Richie doesn’t know how to chase the embarrassment away, but before he can try, Eddie speaks first.

“I’m gonna go get dressed,” Eddie says over his shoulder, already half way out of the room.

 

* * *

 

As soon as they hit the motorway, Eddie’s asleep. Richie keeps his eyes on the winding roads, twisting and turning through the Scottish landscape, like old faded scars. When they’re an hour away from the airport, Eddie sits up with a jolt.

“What’s this song called?”

Richie blinks.

“Uh, I think it’s called smooth? Turn it up if you wanna”

Eddie reaches out towards the radio hesitantly, like he’s waiting for a spark of electricity to jump from the radio to his outstretched finger like it had before. The look of apprehension on Eddie’s face so painfully reminded Richie of how he’d looked before, how his see-through-but-not-really face had twisted in something that looked like pain every time he was jolted by electricity. Richie reaches out, grabs Eddie’s hand, and guides it towards the volume button. They press it together and their hands fall down, still connected, and Eddie gives Richie’s hand a squeeze before he lets go.

The music swells, filling the car, and Richie sings along dramatically, fudging most of the lyrics, but it makes Eddie laugh anyway. 

“D’ya think you could swing dance to this then, Eds? Break out some of that fancy footwork?” 

“Oh, no. Not to this song, I think this song needs … a different kind of dancing”

Richie shoots a quizzical look at Eddie, and is delighted to discover that Eddie’s face has become a deep flushed red.

“Oh? What kind of dancing would that be?”

Eddie coughs, “Um… well, it’d have to be a bit … saucier”

Richie barks out a laugh, “ _Saucier?_ Jesus, Eds. I always forget you’re practically 105”

Eddie scowls at him, and Richie shimmies his shoulders in response. Just as they’re pulling into the car park of the airport, Eddie starts to panic.

“Rich, I think we made a mistake. Maybe I shouldn’t have come, this is all very … intimate”

“Intimate?” Richie questions, hopping out of the car. He walks around to the passenger side, opening the door for Eddie.

“Yeah, I … I’m going to meet your _parents,_ Richie. That’s … wow,” Eddie says, climbing out of the car.

“Well, parent, singular. You’re only meeting the old man”

Eddie avoids Richie’s eyes as they walk towards the arrivals entrance.

“I never met Rupert’s parents”

 _Oh._ The realisation slams into Richie like a freight train. Eddie never had that awkward first meeting with his boyfriends parents, never had to be on his best behaviour in front of two sets of judgemental eyes, never had to go out to dinner at a restaurant no-one liked and play nice. Not until now. But is it the same? Does meeting Richie’s dad strike that very particular anxiety deep into Eddie’s gut? They’re dancing around it, whatever it is that they have. They’re purposefully, pointedly, not naming it. It’s everything and nothing at the same time, it exists and it doesn’t. It’s unnecessarily long eye contact and hand squeezes. It’s coffee in the morning and walks in the hills in the afternoons. It’s watching reality TV on a Saturday evening and getting ice-cream in Portree on a Sunday. It’s _everything,_ it’s almost real but not quite. Schrödinger’s love.

A cacophonous voice wrenches Richie out of his introspection. 

“THERE’S MY BAMBINO!”

“Oh holy Christ”

Richie watches as his father runs over to him, arms outstretched. “Eddie, brace yourself”

Wentworth Tozier collides with his son at the speed of light, sending them both staggering backwards. 

“Gerr’off you brute!” Richie protests, but his arms snake around his father’s midsection.

Went presses several smacking kisses to the side of his face, and Richie rolls his eyes playfully, sending an exasperated look at Eddie, who laughs.

“You’re never too old to love your father, kid” 

“Stop showing off for Eddie” 

Went releases his vice-grip immediately, spinning on his heels. 

“Eddie, ey? Who is this strapping young lad?”

Eddie sticks out his hand, and smiles shakily. 

“Edward Kaspbrak, Sir. A Pleasure to make your acquaintance”

Went ignores Eddie’s outstretched hand, and pulls him into a hug. “Well aren’t you a fancy one! You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend, Rich, and a very polite one at that!”

Eddie pulls away immediately, face red.

“No, no, we’re not – I’m not – it’s not like that, sir. We are … I’m …”

At Eddie’s fumbled protestations, Went shoots Richie a puzzled look, that Richie can only return as a shrug. Luckily, his father is distracted by the need to collect his luggage, and he trots off to the baggage reclaim carrousel. As soon as Went is out of earshot, Eddie corners Richie.

“You told your father that you’re … that you like _men?”_ Eddie hisses, quiet enough that Richie has to strain over the noise of the airport concourse to hear. 

“Uh, I mean, I didn’t so much as tell him as he found out organically when me and one of my _‘study buddies’_ were caught doing a little bit of extracurricular activity, if you catch my drift”

Eddie’s face stays blank, and Richie rolls his eyes, pulling Eddie closer to whisper in his ear.

“My father walked in on us when my ‘ _study buddy_ ’ had his cock inside me" 

Eddie snorts, and shoves at Richie’s shoulder. 

“Oh my gosh! That must have been mortifying” 

Richie shrugs, “Well, it taught the old bugger to knock before just waltzing in”

“I imagine it did. Oh, I could have just about _died_ when he asked whether … if I was … if we were …” Eddie trails off, gesticulating uselessly. 

“If you were my boyfriend? So go on, _am_ I your boyfriend?” Richie jokes, knocking Eddie’s shoulder with his own, trying to coax a laugh out of him but Eddie’s shoulder stays stiff, and he doesn’t laugh. 

“Richie, you know I –”

Before Eddie can finish his sentence, and give Richie the answer he so desperately craves, Went comes bounding back over, tugging a ridiculously oversized suitcase behind him. Richie has never been so disappointed to see his father.

 

* * *

 

“So you’re a _doctor?_ Oh, isn’t that just brilliant. It’s every parent in laws dream isn’t it, my son and the _doctor!”_ Went gushes, twisted around in his seat to face Eddie, who was currently cowering in the back of Richie’s car. 

“Father, if you do not stop harassing Eddie I’m going to throw you out of the car” 

Quiet settles over the car. Richie knows that Eddie isn’t really asleep, because his breathing isn’t deep enough, and that he’s probably got his eyes closed as a self defence mechanism. Went babbles on in the front, quizzing Richie about the Scottish landscape, how many hikes he’s been on, whether he’s tried haggis yet, and whether he owns a kilt. Nearly five hours later, Richie pulls down the dusty track that leads to his little house on the moor. As if by magic, Eddie chooses that moment to sit up. 

“Are we home already?” Eddie yawns, cracking the bones in his neck. Richie shudders. It’s a habit Eddie got into almost immediately after he became physical again, absentmindedly cracking his joints at random points throughout the day. 

Richie kills the engine and they all pile out of the car. Richie pops the boot and hauls his father’s suitcase out, “did you bring the fuckin’ bath tub with you? Jesus this thing’s heavy”

His father isn’t listening, though, having immediately sprung into architect mode.

“Oh, oh, Rich, she’s _gorgeous”_  

“I know, right?” Richie says, puffing his chest slightly, “she’s a real peach” 

Richie follows Went into the kitchen, watching with amusement as his father flits around the room, providing a running commentary about how he’d replastered all the walls, torn down the old ceiling beams and installed new ones, and how Eddie had spilt paint everywhere. After twenty minutes of enthused chatter from his father, Richie can feel his eyelids grow heavy, and he’s now yawning more than talking. 

“This plumbing work is _seamless!_ Who’s your plumber? This work is immaculate, how much do you think I’d have to pay them to move to the states to work for me?” 

“Mike Hanlon, and I think you’d have to give him your entire company and your first born son to get him to move. Look, Dad, you’re welcome to carry on snooping but Eddie and I are knackered, we’re gonna go to bed” 

“Oo-er!”

“I swear to god, Dad, I will drown you in the lake”

“Oh! I forgot about the lake!” 

“It’s out there,” Richie says, pointing out towards where the lake glistens in the afternoon sun, “I’m going to bed now” 

Went captures Richie in a hug before he can escape, pressing a kiss to the side of his face.

“I’m so fucking proud of you, kid”

 

* * *

 

The evening sun bathes Richie’s bedroom in soft light that pools on the floor, and he groans as he turns over, shielding his eyes. The alarm clock on the bedside table reads 7:04pm. With aching bones, he hauls himself out of bed, throwing his ratty old dressing gown over his shoulders, before padding over to Eddie’s room. The door is open, revealing a perfectly made bed.

“RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF AISLE SEVEN!”

His father’s booming voice filters up from the kitchen, striking fear into Richie’s soul. He can hear Eddie’s hooting laughter rising through the house like smoke, and Richie catches himself smiling dopily at it, before he remembers the _cause_ of that laughter and he sprints downstairs, socks sliding on the wooden floors. 

“Please tells me you’re not telling Edward about the time I urinated in aisle seven of Walmart when I was one?” 

“Of course not!” Went says, eyes shining, “I’m telling Edward about the time you pissed in aisle seven of Walmart when you were four” 

Eddie’s cackling now, great gasps of laughter that erupt like lava from his body. It’s infectious, and Richie can’t stop himself from laughing too, and before long all three of them have dissolved into hysterics.

After they’d come down from their laughing high, Went immediately demanded that they start fixing the roof. Climbing onto the roof was terrifying enough – having to balance precariously on a ladder leant against the side of the house wasn’t Richie’s idea of a good time – without Eddie fretting and wringing his hands, occasionally yelling with fright when the ladder wobbled under Richie’s weight.

“Eds, I’m fine, honest! I’ve climbed ladders taller than this and I’ve only fallen off maybe six times in my life" 

“That doesn’t make me feel better, Richard!” 

Went is a speedy, efficient worker, and gets through his pile of slate shingles at double speed, leaving Richie in the dust. They talk quietly as they work, drinking the endless cups of tea that Eddie brings them, climbing the ladder one handed, two cups balanced on a small tray, face scrunched in determination.

“You’ve got a good egg there, bambino,” Went says when they’re taking a break, drinking their fifth cup of tea. 

“For the last fucking time, he’s not my egg” 

Went sends his son a questioning look. “Do you _want_ him to be your egg?”

“More than you’ll ever fuckin’ know. It’s … complicated, though”

“Try me”

“Well, he died in 1940, and I hired an exorcist wizard person to bring him back to life after he haunted me for three months and we slow danced with oven mitts and I fell hopelessly in love with him” 

They stare at each other, until Went makes a face, a _are you shitting me?_ kind of face and Richie smirks. 

“C’mon, what’s really going on?” Went asks, poking his son with the handle of his hammer, but Eddie interrupts them.

“Would either of you like another cup of tea?”

“Oh, I like you, Edward. I like you _a lot._ I could go for another. The tea here really does taste better, who knew”

 

* * *

 

 

They’re sat at the dining table when it goes wrong. 

They’re eating the dinner that Eddie had cooked, tea towel flung over his shoulder, sleeves of his maroon button-up rolled up to the elbow. Richie had drooled at the sight of both him and the hot pot that he’d spent hours slow cooking.

“So, Eds,” Went says around a mouthful of carrot, “are you thinking of buying the house when she’s finished?” 

“Um, buying it? I thought it was Richie’s house?”

“Well yeah, I mean when he flips it, puts it on the market, y’know, when he moves back home”

“Home?” Eddie says, and Richie swears that his heart explodes right there. “What do you mean home? I thought this was his home?”

Thankfully, Went realises that something isn’t right, and makes his excuses.

“I’m just going to take the rest of my dinner outside, y’know, al fresco. Leave you boys to … talk,” and then he’s gone. The kitchen door swings shut behind him, and they’re alone.

“What the fuck’s happening, Richie? Wh – what’s going on?” Eddie asks, voice calm but evidently scared. 

“Look, there’s something I haven’t told you. When I moved here, it was never going to be a forever thing. This is sort of what I do, buy dilapidated old houses, do them up, flip ‘em, and move on” 

“Sort of what you _do?_ ” Eddie parrots, “what does that even mean?” 

“I’m a property developer. I do this for a job, I make money from selling houses I’ve done up. This one,” Richie gestures around, cringing when Eddie flinches, “this one’s no different. Or, it was _supposed_ to be no different” 

“What’s different about this house then? Not good enough to _flip?”_ Eddie spits. Richie shakes his head vehemently. 

“You. You’re different, all the other houses, they didn’t have you. I’ve – I got a letter a few days ago. A week ago, maybe. It was from the immigration office”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I have to leave in just over two months”

Eddie gags at that, before he scrambles out of his chair, runs to the sink, and vomits. Richie springs up, and runs over to Eddie, with the intention of rubbing his back, but Eddie swats him away.

“So you’ve known all this time that you’re leaving me. You let me go through all that _shit_ with Stan, all this … all this with _you_ and you’re just leaving”

“ _Eddie”_ Richie sobs, clutching at his chest as if to stop his heart from shattering, “I didn’t mean to fall – I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t do it on _purpose,_ I just …”

“You just what?” Eddie challenges, wiping at his mouth roughly with the back of his hand before turning to face Richie, “you just _what?”_

“I didn’t mean to end up caring this much about you,” Richie whispers, because it’s now or never, it’s time to open old wounds, time to wrench open his chest and see if Eddie will pluck his heart from his ribs. 

“You care about me?” Eddie says, so innocently, so ridiculously, that it makes Richie laugh.

“Care about you? Are you _blind,_ Eddie? Are you honestly telling me right now that you didn’t know? That you’ve been entirely blind to how much I – how much I –”

The sentence dies in Richie’s throat like a flame, extinguished by fear.

“Richie,” Eddie cautions, voice low, “Richie, if this is because you’re feeling guilty, you’ve got to tell me, if this is all a big ruse that you’re going to regret when you –”

Richie charges forward, propelled by a force he can’t control, and collides into Eddie. Their mouths lock instantly in a messy, off-kilter kiss that is simultaneously too hard, too bruising but not hard or bruising enough. They come together, in the middle of the kitchen, like magnets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not hugely happy w/ this chapter. I've wrestled with it all week, but I hate looking at it now so here you go! It's a bit longer than the previous ones.
> 
> I hope you liked it!! 
> 
> Come chat w/ me on tumblr @ queen-sock
> 
> Thanks for reading <3


	9. so dear I love him that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life.

The kiss changes both everything and nothing at all. The everything that changes, the hands that reach for each other in the hushed dawn, the eyes that lock over morning cereal, the afternoon laughs that melt into each other, the evening caresses on smalls of backs, is painfully overshadowed by the nothing. This nothing looms over their every moment, stolen moments shared together in ecstasy, rapturous but constantly aware of the behemoth that sits in the corner of the room and spits at them.

Richie’s leaving. A fact as constant, as reliable, as the autumn wind.

If Eddie hadn’t hung onto Richie’s forearm with a vice-grip as Richie welcomed the estate agent into the house, if Eddie hadn’t sat on the porch, face schooled into careful apathy as the estate agent took photos of the now finished cottage, if Eddie hadn’t sobbed with wild abandon into the frigid midnight air, great wracking moans that heaved Richie’s heart out of his chest with ghostly arms, Richie wouldn’t have guessed anything was going to change. Everything was going to change. Everything, and nothing at all.

 

* * *

 

It takes three weeks for Richie to book his flights. He opens and closes the page, getting as far as typing _Edinburgh International to LAX_ into the search bar, but without fail, his hands shake violently and the laptop slides off his lap with a satisfying thud. Eventually, with a belly full of Dutch courage and Eddie squeezing his hand, he manages it. His flight leaves in a month.

The house sells easily. A young couple buys it, and they visit three times before putting the offer in. The man brays about the way the light floods into the study in the morning, and the woman squeals about the terrace balcony on the second bedroom. Richie accepts the offer, despite the fact it’s five grand under the asking price.

One week later and the _For Sale_ sign is replaced by a bright red beacon, _SOLD._ More times than he’d ever admit, Richie catches Eddie staring at the sign with malice in his eyes. Richie always makes sure that he looks away before Eddie can catch him staring. 

Two weeks, and they’ve hit the half way point. They’re still sleeping in separate rooms. Eddie had packed all of his possessions into boxes the day after Richie had booked his plane ticket. Richie only lasted six minutes of watching Eddie carefully fold his jumpers and his socks and those _fucking_ tartan pyjamas before he had to excuse himself to wail violently in the bathroom. He’d given himself three minutes, before wiping his eyes furiously with a balled up piece of toilet paper, and emerging from the bathroom with a watery smile and tired eyes. But, as soon as he caught sight of Eddie sat on the bed, one of Richie’s old fleeces clutched in his hands, his attempts at self-preservation proved futile. They’d collapsed in a heap on the bed, a mass of shaking limbs, clutching, scrabbling hands and hushed confessions. _I adore you, I adore you, I adore you._

Three weeks. They’d spent the last days in bed, moving for nothing but sprints to the toilet and visits to the kitchen. They don’t fuck. Richie surprises himself with the realisation that he doesn’t want to fuck Eddie. Not yet. He can’t bear the thought of their first time being a goodbye fuck, a ‘ _I’m sorry I’m leaving you_ ’ fuck, a ‘ _you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I’m still going to leave you anyway’_ fuck. So they don’t. They lie together, they touch often and kiss sometimes. Eddie drags his nails down Richie’s arm absently, a soft scratchy feeling, as if to remind Richie that he’s still here, if only for now. Richie spends most of his time running his hands through Eddie’s hair, hair that was once immortalised in a plastic-perfect quiff but now stands on end, wild and free. They talk, regale each other with animated stories from their past. Richie tells Eddie of Bev, of Bill and Ben and the time they all got drunk and swam in the water feature of their college, he tells Eddie about his mother, about the time she took him apple picking when he was seven. Eddie tells Richie about his mother, a long, painful tale that ends in sorrow, but he also tells Richie about Rupert, and how they’d met and how the sky caught fire the first time they’d kissed. Richie had expected jealousy to bloom in his stomach, hot and bitter, but it didn’t.

“What’s America like?” Eddie asks on a Wednesday afternoon.

Richie tightens his grip around Eddie’s waist. “It’s … pretty fuckin’ shit most of the time, corrupt politicians and gun crime and hatred and bigotry but …”

“But what?”

“My parents lives there, and … it’s home, it’s shitty, but it’s home. Well, it _was_ home, I guess”

“Was home? Why? What changed?”

“You gonna make me spell it out for you, Eddie Spaghetti?”

“You know I am,” Eddie said, batting his eyelashes coquettishly. Richie rolled his eyes.

“You’re such a little shite, you know”

“That sounded pretty Scottish”

“Mike’s been rubbing off on me”

“I should jolly well hope he _hasn’t_ been rubbing off on you,” Eddie said with a faux-stern expression that was so ridiculously, so absurdly _Eddie_ that Richie couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“Eddie, you know – I … You know that I really …”

“What? C’mon Rich, spit it out”

“I …”

“ _Richie”_

“I really think we should mow the lawn tomorrow afternoon”

“…Oh”

 

* * *

 

Richie loved Eddie. It was a fact as clear as ice, as real as snow, as blatantly obvious as the nose on his face. The “ _I adore you’s”_ flowed easily, the “ _you’re my entire world and more”_ came naturally, but the admission of love, the wrenching his chest open, displaying his heart, that was different.  Telling Jasmine he loved her had been easy, partly because he’d never meant it. Endless false confessions. Perhaps it was cruel. Regret wasn’t something that Richie was used to.

“I’m going to stay with Mike”

“Huh?” 

Eddie slumped down onto the sofa next to Richie, and tucked his head neatly into the junction between Richie’s neck and shoulder. 

“I’ve asked him, and he said I could stay with him until you … if you … y’know. Until then”

“You know I’m coming back, right? I’m going to come back for you”

“I know you want to”

“Eddie,” Richie implored, shifting on the sofa until he was looking directly into Eddie’s eyes, “you’ve got to believe me, I’m going to come back for you”

“I believe you’re going to try”

Richie grabbed Eddie’s hands. “Eddie, _please”_

“Mike said I can take Mr Chips out anytime I like, I might bring him around here, check up on the house sometimes”

“Don’t change the subject”

“I hope they don’t change the house too much, I’d be ever so sad if I came back and it looked different, if it looked –”

“Eddie!”

Eddie closed his eyes, pulling away from Richie slightly.

“If you promise you’re coming back to me, it makes it too hard. I’ll just sit and wait, and I can’t … I can’t do that”

“I told you, I’m coming –”

“Don’t,” Eddie said, eyes still closed, “stop it. Just – tell me you’ll try and that’ll be enough”

“I’ll try”

 

* * *

 

Mike calls it a practice run. A trial run, he’d said, seeing as the last time Eddie stayed with him ended in a sleepless night for all three of them. Eddie’s reticent at first, initially refusing on the grounds of being patronised, but initially relenting after Richie pleaded with him that it probably was a good idea, if not for Eddie then for himself. Slowly, like melting ice, Eddie agrees. They bundle themselves into Richie’s car, the same car that Richie will return to the dealer the morning he leaves, and drive to Mike’s. 

Mike’s house is warm, almost uncomfortably so, and Richie watches as Eddie peels his sweater over his head, face flushed red. 

“Thanks for this, Mike. You’re a good friend”

“What about me?"

A familiar voice echoed from the kitchen.

“What the fucking fuck? Stan?!”

“Such a lovely greeting, Richard. Ever the pleasure to see you,” Stan said, sardonically, as he passed Mike a small tumbler of honey-coloured liquid.

“I thought you’d flown back to Ireland?”

“I did. I came back, though. I’ve grown rather fond of Scotland, and the things that live in Scotland”

Mike’s face flushed scarlet, and Richie hooted with joy.

“Well, well, well! The plumber and the wizard, a true storybook romance”

“Richard, do shut up. How are you feeling, Eddie? Mike tells me you’ll be staying with us for a while,” Stan said, turning to face a rather down-trodden looking Eddie.

“I – I was, but if you’re staying here too, I don’t want to … I don’t want to impose, you know”

“Shush, you’re more than welcome here. Has Richie told you about Skype?” 

“Skype?”

Stan rolled his eyes at Richie. “Have you really not told him about Skype? Isn’t that what all the long-distance lovers are doing these days? Skype sex?” 

Richie slapped a hand over Stan’s mouth, but got bitten for his efforts.

“Take your damn hoof off my mouth, Richie! All I’m trying to do is help you in your long sexless months ahead”

“We haven’t … um … we haven’t _done that,_ not yet” Eddie stammered, face letter-box red.

“You haven’t? Huh. Well, Skype does serve purposes other than getting you virtually laid, I suppose. Do you still want me to show you what it is?”

Eddie nodded wordlessly, and followed Stan into Mike’s office leaving Richie and Mike standing in the living room. 

“Ah take it ye told ‘im then?” 

“Whatever do you mean, Michael?”

“Ye know exactly wha’ ah mean,” Mike said, passing Richie his own tumbler of whiskey before going to pour himself another. “Ye know _exactly_ what I mean. The fact ye didn’t balk when Stan mentioned you two fuckin’? _That’s_ how ah know ye know what ah mean” 

Richie slumped into the cushiony arm chair, folding his limbs awkwardly. “Yeah, I guess I told him” 

“It went well though, aye?”

“Sort of. I mean, he feels the same and … I know he knows that I _adore_ him, but how well could it possibly go when I’m leaving him the day after tomorrow to fly back home to a country I no longer consider my home?”

Mike sipped his whiskey coolly, “ah see”

Richie sighed. He could hear Eddie’s voice floating through the house from the office, Stan’s voice chasing it.

“If ya don’t come back, if ya decide to stay in America, yer gonna have to tell him yerself. Ah won’t do it for ya”

“I _am_ coming back,” Richie spat, but Mike just shook his head.

“Ah know ya _think_ ya are, but be realistic, Rich. It’s a big commitment to make to someone ye’v only been involved with for a few weeks” 

“That’s … that doesn’t even make sense, I’ve … I’ve _loved_ Eddie for longer than a few fuckin’ weeks, Mikey, you know that”

“Aye. I do, but does _he?”_

“…Yes. He _must_ know, I tell him all the time how much I adore him”

“Aye, I’m sure ya do. But does he know ya _love_ him? It’s different,” Mike said, simply.

“I haven’t … managed to say those words yet. Not exactly, but he knows. He must know”

 

* * *

 

 

“Hiya, Eds”

“Hello, love”

Richie’s heart swells.

“This is weird”

“I know”

Silence falls around them. Eddie’s face, pixelated and two-dimensional on Richie’s screen, looks small and distant, and Richie’s fingers itch with the desire to reach out and stroke Eddie’s cheek. He does just that, but instead of flesh, warm and soft, the pads of his fingers meet glass, unmoving, cold.

“How are you?”

“I saw you less than three hours ago, Rich”

“I know, but a lot can change in three hours. Have Mike and Stan convinced you to have a threesome with them, yet?” Richie asks, cringing immediately as the words leave his mouth, but Eddie just laughs.

“Not yet, but hey, you never know, loneliness does strange things to a boy”

“Do you think you’re going to be lonely?” Richie asks, and now it’s serious. The smile slips off Eddie’s face like butter.

Eddie shrugs, a tiny movement Richie can barely see. “I guess. Probably”

“We’ll skype every day right? I’ll ring you twice a day, if I have to. We’ll talk all the damn time. Ask Mike to get you a phone, we can text, we can –”

“Rich,” Eddie interrupts, “it’s going to be okay. You don’t have to talk to me every waking second of every day. I’m going to be fine"

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Richie mutters, but thankfully, Eddie doesn’t hear him.

They talk for hours, with Stan and Mike each making multiple cameo appearances throughout the night, until Richie’s eyes start to droop, weighed down with leaden tiredness, and the pauses between their conversation grow longer and longer until they’ve drifted in and out of sleep in comfortable silence for over an hour. The last thing that Richie mutters to the slumbering Eddie are those words he can’t bring himself to say when Eddie’s awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's shorter than usual. I've been so ridiculously tired bc of my new job recently, so that's why this story has taken so long to update. Pls pls bare with me. <3
> 
> I'm on tumblr @ queen-sock, come chat w/ me
> 
> chapter title is from paradise lost

**Author's Note:**

> Title of this story comes from 'The Graveyard Book' by Neil Gaiman.
> 
> Catch me on tumblr; queen-sock@tumblr.com


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